Sorry oversaw your answer. I did not question moneros usage in darknet markets, use whatever you want. but if you already hold bitcoin which is a way bigger amount of people you can go lightning->ecash if you need full privacy for specific txs. you can also use lightning with private channels for day to day usage. monero plays a niche role which is ok. but its not easy to on and off ramp from fiat to gain that privacy and because of that more and more people getting onboarded via bitcoin and can get access to privacy txs via ln (+ecash). In the long run this makes monero obsolete imho. will it be a niche? possibly yes. but not for mass privacy adoption.
Not according to darknet markets which are the worlds largest p2p markets reliant on cryptocurrency.
Discussion
Darknet markets aren't niche, they're estimated to be the biggest p2p crypto market for physical goods. Why is Monero almost exclusively used while neither lightning nor ecash are anywhere to be found?
Why has the free market decided to use an inferior and obsolute network when they begun with Bitcoin and bitcoin has stronger network effect and liquidity? Why didn't the Darknet switch to lightning over Monero?
Comparing to the broader world economy darknet market are an absolute niche. ~0.002 from global e commerce is a niche.
Why should those markets switch to lightning or ecash right now? monero is older and works darknet markets obviously well enough. bitcoin lightning not aming for darknet, its object is to dominate/penetrate global markets.
You claimed that lightning makes Monero obsolete, yet currently, Monero payment stats across crypto accepting businesses: Nano-GPT, shopinbit, coincards etc shows way higher volume for Monero than lightning and sometimes even over Bitcoin as a whole.
Then I brought up the point of when privacy means freedom vs incarceration like with darknet markets, the market chooses Monero and doesn't even consider lightning.
What then gives you the confidence to make the claim that lightning and especially ecash, makes Monero obsolete? All evidence up until now points to the inverse, is that just temporary irrationality, and lightning is destined to explode in usage? Perhaps a major UX and privacy innovation is right around the corner for lightning?
If you call a worldwide transaction volume of 0.002 percent not obsolete than ok. I doubt monero will ever go beyond dark markets and some specific shops. As of right now monero users are willing to spend there coins because of privacy functions or because they don’t believe in worldwide adoption is unknown.
Lightning Volume exploded in 2025, you can ask any noderunner on nostr.
Just because some shops have a higher monero volume doesn’t count the lightning volume for all the other txs.
At one point blinded paths for lightning gonna be implemented which increases the privacy even more.
No not some shops, all shops that accept both Monero and Lightning shows insanely disproportionate volume in the Monero direction. I've yet to see statistics that even show deviation from this, I invite you to find it.
Yeah lightning volume exploded with Nostr almost certainly because of small zap donations, which is the best and pretty much only use case for lightning currently.
No it didn’t explode with nostr. It exploded with privacy swapping and the implementation of lightning into a shitload of square pos terminals. A gazillion more point of sales than all those monero shops.
Can you prove that with square statistics? I talked to my local coffee shop a month after square released lightning and I was the first person trying to pay with lightning. My payment also failed after 60 seconds ostensibly because my channel was opened with too small a node and couldn't find a path lol.
I'm dealing in real hard evidence, you're talking about speculation. Can you bring the evidence? Also bit of an unfair comparison bringing up square since the only cryptocurrency they can accept is lightning bitcoin. It would be very hard to surmise a direct comparison between lightning and monero when you're dealing with a platform that only accepts one and not the other.
I can tell you that since they implemented it the volume on my routing node increased drastically. Why is the comparison unfair. Way more people holding bitcoin than monero and they gonna switch to lightning (with privacy features like ecash on top) than going to swap to monero to pay goods on the darknet.
Very speculative claim with limited evidence of real world transactions. Since you're talking hypothetical we will have to come back to this in the future.
Agree, it is speculative. We are gonna see. Enjoyed the talk anyway! Always good to have different opinions talking about possible outcomes in the future without insulting each other ✌️