" Channel liquidity and offline receives, in my opinion, are the two most obvious reasons why self-custodial lightning is not popular. When most users hear about any of these, they just think "screw that" and move to a custodial wallet because it is so much easier. If these were our only two problems, I think self-custodial lightning would be fine. It may never be the predominant way people use lightning, but we could get the UX good enough that we have a significant portion of people using lightning in a sovereign way. However, there are more problems under the surface."

~ BenTheCarmen

Is it time to reframe our image of where lightning's role lies in the Bitcoin stack? There have been problems in the implementation that make the self custodial road a far more difficult UX challenge. While much of it has been mitigated, a few intractable problems remain, and some may be an existential result of how LN enforces security on the main chain. Where will the users be in a world of a billion Bitcoin users? And can the promise of lightning ever be fulfilled?

Check out the original article at Rethinking Lightning. (Link: http://tinyurl.com/mvcmwubk)

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