Lightning Beta Available on Main Net

I was completely blindsided by the news that released yesterday that the lightning beta was now available for the main net. I think I made a claim that we would get a main net beta by the end of this year, which shows that they are progressing much faster than even I would have thought. They still dont have a few features that are required which will take a while to implement (which is why I said beta by the end of the year, I thought they were going to wait until those were done), but it seems that they are moving ahead at a breakneck speed.

I believe most of the reason that lightning is releasing their main net early is due to many people using the lightning beta that was made for the test net, for the main net anyway, which they didnt recommend. They still dont recommend using the beta with large amounts of money, but its at least a tad bit safer than what most people were using as the alternative. There is a ton of work that still needs to be done but the beta seems to have many of the barebone features that people want to test out. Even a few companies in the space like bitrefill are taking payments with lightning.

Lighting is going to be a massive upgrade for bitcoin in the future especially because it makes many of the desirable types of transactions possible. Micropayments, instant payments, near free transactions are all possible with lightning if the adoption is there. Many companies held out on batching and using segwit for a long time simply because they could pass on the bill to the consumer but with lightning theres going to be a real reason to adopt it and fast because it will cost businesses a ton of money. Exchanges are going to compete by using lightning and offering near zero fees for withdrawals. By not implementing it you are going to lose customers.

The few things that lighting has to still implement will make the experience much more user friendly because it is not anywhere near ready for the masses at this point in time, but given enough time and resources it will be. The biggest potential for lighting though is adoption from businesses outside of the bitcoin space, primarily from those who invested directly in lightning. Lightning raised 2.5 million in funding from the Twitter and Square CEO Jack Dorsey, former Paypal COO and a robinhood cofounder. These connections put lightning labs in a great position to potentially have a user friendly lightning wallet usable on those platforms. Square is a huge one that could potentially bring ease of use to a network of vendors that bitcoin only dreams of.

Regardless of how far along lightning is at the moment, the main net beta is really good news for everyone. The sooner layer 2 solutions come out, the better we will see the space grow. For many who have claimed bitcoin isnt usable on a mass scale, I am hoping that lightning will be able to solve this problem. Lightning still isnt a solution if you want censorship resistant and semi anonymous payments, but it definitely does solve big problems in the crypto commerce space. Its times like this where you need to disregard the price and look at the actual technical achievements being made.

-Calaber24p