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It's been 6+ years of struggle to get LN anywhere beyond a community of mostly ideological users with no visible success or perspective. My opinion is ultimately LN is not what market at large wants from Bitcoin and folks should look into other directions besides dumb payments, and not overly fixate on LN.
I personally don't think LN is done, and in fact, I think it's a great success already, though perhaps it isn't (and won't be) the kind of success that people were originally hoping for. And that's the interesting point, which the quote above illustrates: it's hard to know what the world will want and use.
If btc doesn't die out entirely (and I don't think it will) then I have strong conviction that the ways in which it's actually used in a decade will surprise the hell out of people now. That's not a shortcoming in lightning or in anything else. It's the complexity of the world.
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I don't think it's done either.
I think people got into a "Mission Accomplished" mindset last bull run and thought scaling bitcoin via lightning was easier than it is. Reality didn't meet their expectations so they're blaming reality when they should instead adjust their expectations.
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I like how you put it.
Sadly, the "reality doesn't meet my expectations, so I will blame reality" mindset seems to be endemic. It's a feature of human-kind and I should learn to hate it less.
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Serious LN dev is hard and time consuming, I no longer have time or resources to keep it up or even maintain what has been developed so far. In my opinion the whole LN protocol is overly complex and is getting worse and at this point can only be developed by very few high profile specialists at a very slow pace.
That probably sums up his real objection 100%. Lightning is just too complex for his skill set, and he's angry that he's being pushed out of wallet development because of that. Meanwhile Lightning is a success, and adoption of it keeps going up, pushing out on-chain Bitcoin stuff. Which also pisses him off.
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As I always said: bitcoin is only for brave, not for the weak. Anton is a good developer but also a well known quitter. Nothing new with this post.
I was a strong supporter of his projects from the beginning, using BLW, SBW and later OBW. Were good apps with good ideas. It's sad seeing him quitting but shows up that he's still young and do not understand how this fucked up world works.
If you are a really good developer you never quit. Only cowards quit.
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I agree with you.
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SBW and OBW will die slowly as Mycelium died. It was fun until they lasted.
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Now I understand because Fiatjaf support Drivechains
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I made this meme long time ago, but seems to have a lot of meanings...
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Shame. A great wallet lost some great functionality. Still scope for it to be a terrific on-chain wallet, however. I am a fan of a lot of SBW’s UI; it just needs the Bitcoin Design team to lend a hand imo
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Nice to see the dead wood getting chopped away.
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