Did you ever run your own node? Been running mine for years and I rarely have any trouble transacting even with larger payments. LN has it's caveats, but once you have a few channels established transacting becomes an absolute non issue.
Discussion
I've used Zeus. It wasn't great. I've never experienced Lightning without issues at some point, custodial or otherwise.
It could be that there's a lot of up front suffering to get through?
Either way, it is bearish for adoption in my opinion. I want to replace the legacy system but I'm also disillusioned by it all lately. It's awesome when there aren't problems. But the biggest problem for me is the totally unhelpful nature of errors in most of the software I've used. I really don't want to learn Lightning from the ground up to use it smoothly in a free way. Maybe my expectations are too high. Maybe it isn't possible to have that. I truly don't know. But it seems like "no issues" has a pretty high price tag as things are. Again, maybe that's just the nature of it.
I guess I just always imagined a future where average people can easily setup and use freedom and privacy focused tools without deep understanding of each tool. Like I don't have time for that shit on top of the actual work I do in the real world. And I don't think I'm asking for too much. I could just be asking for it too early. Or there simply isn't enough interest, funding, developers, etc. Maybe I will have to focus my real world work on this instead, but that can't be the case for everyone forever. At some point, a surgeon has to be able to just use the tools freely without spending much time on the tools. Otherwise, we're just spinning our wheels in the mud here. Frankly, there's usually a lot of low key gas lighting anytime someone brings up how shit the UX is. Did you do this, and that, and remember there's this and that. Cool, but that is how this stuff remains irrelevant. Ideally, we should see less of that over time. And I think we are in some ways. I haven't for Lightning though. At least not if I stray from custodial to custodial payments.
I'm really good at what I do in healthcare. I don't want to spend time away from that working on the thing I use to buy coffee. I just want it to be reliable, secure, and private. I don't feel I get that using massive custodians. That's hardly better than the legacy system. A bit maybe. But noncustodial has been a total shitshow for me.
We “are still early”…expectations for bitcoin to operate like the modern financial world out of the gates isn’t realistic. Remember when ATM cards first came out and there weren’t any ATM to be found, or when you did they didn’t connect with your own bank’s network? Even today, try depositing cash into an ATM that isn’t your own bank’s branded ATM—it doesn’t work.
Like most people, you don’t want to think about money from a perspective of logistics and mechanics. It should just work, and that’s fine to view it that way, but improvements are ongoing, especially at this point in time.
What led me to respond to your post was the idea of not needing to know how privacy and security works in order to use it, is a common principle. Few can explain how a common door lock works, or the tines of a key, and yet the still they carry keys and use them every day. *The principle of the key* is #modulo's raison d'être.
The UX of #bitcoin and the #lightning network isn’t seamless, but we have come so far, so fast, I am optimistic.
I fully admit that it truly could just be that my expectations are too early. And some of that comes from what I hear people saying versus what my actual experience shows me. I think there's a lot of cope preventing reality from being faced fully, which likely slows things down and could lead to centralized services winning out. Maybe that's natural for emerging tech. This is the first time I'm living through something so radical. I remember pre-smart phone days but even that isn't the same.
I wanted to zap your response but got this. 😂 I'm working on keeping an open mind and laughing where I can to enjoy the process of being an early adopter. It's hard sometimes, but what else can we do?
