The post reflects on the challenges facing Bitcoin's Lightning Network and the evolving perspectives of its community. It critiques the current state of Lightning, especially for self-custodial users, highlighting key issues such as channel liquidity and offline payment problems. Despite attempts to address these issues through solutions like Muun Wallet and Phoenix, the user experience remains burdensome, leading many to prefer custodial wallets.
The post also points out that Lightning’s reliance on on-chain fees creates additional obstacles, as these fees affect liquidity and channel functionality, particularly in high-fee environments. Proposed solutions, like anchor channels and ephemeral anchors, address the problem but don’t fully resolve the underlying issues.
The author suggests that scaling Bitcoin requires more than just improving Lightning; it needs to address the scaling of ownership, which today is primarily handled through custody or federated models like Liquid or Fedimints. The solution could be the implementation of Bitcoin covenant proposals, which would allow more scalable and flexible ownership of UTXOs without compromising sovereignty.
While Bitcoin’s scaling challenges are significant, the post emphasizes that solutions like Fedimints provide a promising approach, combining Lightning with a federated model to scale Bitcoin's ownership in a decentralized way. The author sees Fedimints as an ideal solution and expresses optimism about integrating it into Mutiny Wallet.
The post reflects on the challenges facing Bitcoin's Lightning Network and the evolving perspectives of its community. It critiques the current state of Lightning, especially for self-custodial users, highlighting key issues such as channel liquidity and offline payment problems. Despite attempts to address these issues through solutions like Muun Wallet and Phoenix, the user experience remains burdensome, leading many to prefer custodial wallets.
The post also points out that Lightning’s reliance on on-chain fees creates additional obstacles, as these fees affect liquidity and channel functionality, particularly in high-fee environments. Proposed solutions, like anchor channels and ephemeral anchors, address the problem but don’t fully resolve the underlying issues.
The author suggests that scaling Bitcoin requires more than just improving Lightning; it needs to address the scaling of ownership, which today is primarily handled through custody or federated models like Liquid or Fedimints. The solution could be the implementation of Bitcoin covenant proposals, which would allow more scalable and flexible ownership of UTXOs without compromising sovereignty.
While Bitcoin’s scaling challenges are significant, the post emphasizes that solutions like Fedimints provide a promising approach, combining Lightning with a federated model to scale Bitcoin's ownership in a decentralized way. The author sees Fedimints as an ideal solution and expresses optimism about integrating it into Mutiny Wallet.