Is the lightning network capable of scaling to a billion users ?

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Idk

Sure

Great answer, i often read different. That past approx 100 million it’s a problem.

There will be bottlenecks, it would grow organically. When bottlenecks arise, routes around will be built and not everyone is gonna be running a node.

I think layer 1 is perfect, layer 2 is not there yet, I don't think the brightest and best are working on bitcoin and I don't think a billion users will use lightning.

But sure, why would it be impossible?

Just read new solutions were needed as lightning unlikely to cope as a standard fast micro payment solution at scale

But why wouldn't it? How does it reach a scaling limit at 100,000,000 users?

No it was an estimate of where it would be hitting issues . I don’t have enough knowledge to offer an opinion. I was just hearing this from various people

If there's enough channels with enough capacities, I don't see why not. CashU will also help.

Good question

Liquidity will be the problem if a billion users appeared today. But then there are those who would add liquidity into the network to facilitate the volume of payments. Throughput wise the network can handle that number of users.

Why is it that several people are suggesting there needs to be further options not yet developed to play that role?

Lightning does have its technical downsides, from an operator point of view. Its just one step along the way to a global solution. It may or may not end up being the last step that solves the problem. Got to remember that lightning is only around 5 years old, still a baby and lots of developments still to be made that haven't even been thought of yet.

On a slightly ironic note your lightning zap doesn’t work 😂

Wat

Yep, couldn’t zap you

Case in point, zaps go straight to my node and shit breaks.

Yep, very early and not user friendly to run oneself often. Getalby is solid but not the way for self sovereignty

Agreed without a certain amount of technical knowledge and comprehension of the underlying network, a light node is difficult. But then again its unfeasible and unnecessary for everyone to have their own node.

Thanks for the heads up, I'll check out what's going on with that.

Flashes on and off for me

only in a custodial way

To create a lightning channel you have to create an on-chain transaction. Last few blocks had ~ 3000 transactions. So to get 1 billion lightning channels, it would take over six years if you managed to use every single transaction.