Lightning Network Exploits Continue to Hinder the Bitcoin Scaling Solution - More propaganda spread by bitcoin.com - They (Lead by Roger Ver) are completely bias towards Bitcoin Cash/Bcash/BCH - It's an alt-coin. Bitcoin.com will only continue to spread FUD about Bitcoin fees to try get users to Bitcoin Cash/BCH. Truth is, the adoption of BCH is near zero, do you own research - look at the metrics.
I use Lightning on a daily-bases; it's probably one of Bitcoin's best tools. I've saved so many sats in fees. It's fast, private & frictionless. It's exceptional for micro-payments & tipping. Yes, Lightning is still young - not even 3 years old. There are going to be bugs like any piece of software. I wouldn't commit a real lot of funds to it at once. It's still highly experimental, but it works. I try to pick nodes that are reputable to connect with. Worse case scenario, their reputation is on-the-line. I highly doubt they'll try to steal funds from you though; I've found Bitcoiners to be some of the most honest people out there.
Failing this, Lightning is trust-less by design, there has been bugs where a malicious actor could drain funds from a channel, but they have all been patched. The bugs are generally kept quiet in the development community until rectified. There has been full transparency/disclosure thus far.
Joost Jager, Lightning engineer, agrees it's still got a long way to go, however he is extremely confident it has a bright future. I've listened to many podcasts, interviewing Joost. He's extremely level-headed and rational. Bitcoin had more issues in the early days too - it's still alive & grows stronger by the day. Bitcoin/Lightning is open-source, anyone can verify/add to the code. You cannot compare this to normal software, the innovation is running wild at an astonishing rate. Like Bitcoin, I would not bet against Lightning scaling Bitcoin to the world.
Bitcoin fees are important for the network - a fee market prevents spamming & motivates miners to keep mining when the mempool is clogged (Larger fees increase their daily revenue a lot). In this current instance though, the mempool is clogged because a bunch of Chinese miners had to turn off their rigs due to the floods. Hash-rate is returning now. A difficulty adjustment (One of Bitcoin's greatest features) is coming within the next few days, so no doubt the congestion/back log will clear soon.
The more you look at Bitcoin's design, the more you realize how beautiful it is. Blockchain will never scale as well as a second layer solutions. Bitcoin's blockchain is for security & censorship resistance. Lightning is the highway for Bitcoin. High fees will push more users onto Lightning. The larger Lightning grows, the better it will become. In the future users won't know the difference between on-chain & lightning. Lightning enables a complete new array of use-cases, that simply wouldn't possible on-chain. Imagine getting your wage streamed to you by the micro-second.
As development progresses, the line between on-chain & lightning will only become more blurred to the mainstream. The internet has multiple layers for scaling, no one needs to understand it. They use the internet because it has an immense amounts of value. In the not too distant future, users will no doubt enter Bitcoin directly Lightning. Bitcoin on-chain will probably be used by the elite wealth in the Citadel/ hardcore Bitcoiners.
Lastly, it's becoming impossible to gauge the growth of Lighting as more & more people are opening private channels. Publicly there's only ~1000 BTC being broadcasted. There could be 10x this in reality. I always open private & I know many others too. Privacy should be your number 2 priority after Bitcoin. So really, the success of Lightning should be seeing more publicly visible liquidity disappear. More people should open private channels to mitigate future attacks.
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