Really, lightning solves the problem of instant settlement. It won't necessarily be cheap.
Lightning is useful, I use it heaps and I remain bullish on it.
Discussion
Cheaper than VISA/MC?
Well speaking about non custodial use, you still have to be able to access on chain fees to use lightning. What happens when chain fees rise?
Right now, cheaper by 50x-100x. My node typically has fees about 1.5% of what Visa would charge, and even less for smaller transactions. Once blockspace becomes consistently scarce however, fees could rise closer to Visa levels.
Correct, for the OP I was thinking more about future high fee scenarios...
It’ll be interesting if there will be a difference between fees on new channels and fees on old channels. I believe routing attempts to find the lowest fee paths, which could mean there continues to be downward pressure on fee amounts as high fee nodes receive less transaction volume.
Definitely agree that it will be higher than it is now, since it’s still essentially free.
I’ll be able to spend my entire life using lightning an on chain. It just would take decades to build out infrastructure to support 8B people in a self custodial manner using only lightning as currently constructed. More work will be done, L3 will be built with sufficient demand.
cheap is a relative turn.
🙌🧡