I have used lightning, in person, to buy things in multiple countries and overall it worked very well. Custodial, non-custodial on an umbrel, and non-custodial through an LSP they all went through.

The payments were cheap, almost instant, and they did what no-other cryptocurrency can do…

Cheap quick proof of work payments that are legitimately scalable for millions of people.

No waiting for 20 minutes to ‘spend the utxo again’. No using a chain (ie bcash) with totally empty blocks. No raising the block size which comes with its own set of compromises (unacceptable)

The shipcoiners hate lightning and no matter what they say ‘it’s failed’. Because it gives “their coin” basically no reason to exist.

No other cryptocurrency does what Bitcoin/lightning does meaning it 1) doesn’t raise the block size 2) doesn’t require empty blocks and 3) allows for instant transactions that are actually proof of work that aren’t a giant pos scam.

Any crypto that isn’t ’proof of work’ is a scam and does not compete it doesn’t count.

And in the PoW arena there’s nothing else that brings scalable ‘sound money’ to millions of people as realistically as Bitcoin + Lightning.