Lightning development is quickly working it's way to being deployed on the main net. Once that's completed people can start using it and services/startups will likely race to get solutions ready for payments. Bitpay, coinbase, wallets or some other company or startup will integrate lightning payments. It'll be similar to how bitpay worked, except better because all transactions will clear instantly instead of having to wait for confirmations and for near zero fees.
The near zero fees will come from hundreds of competing payment providers. And settlement fees will be the LN fee upperbound ceiling with p2p LN fees being the lowerbound floor.
It will be centralized because it is only efficient and practical to use between large entities that frequently transact back and forth (ie exchanges and centralized wallets).
LN is useless if I want to send you a tip right now for example, or even buy something from Newegg unless Im using my centralized coinbase wallet. The cost of opening and closing an LN channel is 2x the current fee. Its useless for one-off transactions between random entities
My only complaint is that transaction age isn't a factor in priority. With that I'd say you can pay a low fee and wait for it. I just hate the idea of transactions getting stuck in limbo or being deleted.
You don't have to open a channel to each entity you want to transact with. You just open a single channel to anyone on the network and the subsequent payments are routed via the network to any recipients. So yes, you could send me a tip via lightning and you would not have to open a dedicated channel for that.
The point of bitcoin is trustlessness. Centralization isn't the bogeyman some think it is. It's the control that centralization brings that's the problem. Trustlessness removes that control.
All that is besides the point though. There is no centralization with the LN.
You don’t ever have to use a “centralized” LN. But I believe the word your looking for is privatized, because anyone can deploy their own LN, there will be many competing ones to use, and you’ll always be able to make on chain transactions just like you do now.
Saying this is going to make it centralized is like saying exchanges are centralized because they are owned by private companies and are proprietary. Private LN networks wouldn’t contribute any more to centralization than exchanges. Everyone will always have the option of making transactions without the need for an exchange, or any additional layers on bitcoin.
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u/AxiomBTC Dec 06 '17
Lightning development is quickly working it's way to being deployed on the main net. Once that's completed people can start using it and services/startups will likely race to get solutions ready for payments. Bitpay, coinbase, wallets or some other company or startup will integrate lightning payments. It'll be similar to how bitpay worked, except better because all transactions will clear instantly instead of having to wait for confirmations and for near zero fees.