The Lightning Network (LN) of the Bitcoin network was created to obtain quick transactions and less expensive commissions, an alternative solution to the official blockchain which however involves high commission costs, in fact in the most congested times of the network the cost has reached a few tens of dollars .
The development of the secondary network or layer2 of Bitcoin still has many limitations today. Although it has grown significantly in the last two years, unfortunately the maximum capacity of the network is currently only 4,755 $BTC, equivalent to 138 million dollars, with obvious difficulties in increasing this threshold.
Another big problem of the LN network is given by the presence of nodes of just under 50% on centralized servers: on Amazon Web Services there are 532 nodes for a total of 1740 $BTC, while on Google Cloud we find 80 nodes and 1230 $BTC on -chain. From this, it can be understood that a sudden stop of the Amazon and Google cloud would create a big problem for the network. Although the two servers have near 100% reliability, this could present a risk for the decentralization of the LN network.
But, in order for layer 2 of Bitcoin to compete with the world of traditional electronic payments, the number of nodes and the capacity of the network itself must be multiplied, still too limited for Bitcoin's objective.
It will probably still take many years before LN is competitive but it is important that the network continues to grow and to attract more and more nodes and users to its adoption. Being able to use BTC even for payments of a few dollars is essential for mass adoption otherwise the cryptocurrency will remain only a valuable instrument like gold, but without any possibility of competition in the electronic payments sector.
On the other hand, Satoshi Nakamoto's idea was precisely to create a decentralized alternative to the centralized payment system and I would be curious to know if he had actually imagined how complex the blockchain was from this point of view.
But great ideas are born from great minds, it is up to those who appreciate them to be able to tell the rest of the world about it.
