Lightning is one of the most exciting and innovative technologies that have been built on Bitcoin, but it is also one of the most misunderstood techniques. From its early days with popular efforts such as “Plebnet”, to ambitious visions of lightning applications (Lapps), and the idea of winning the negative return as a steering knot operator, enthusiasm over lightning often outperformed its practical facts.
Several Bitcoiners expected that Lightning would be a smooth extension of the Bitcoin-Just as sovereignty, decentralization, and can be accessed as a full Bitcoin node. But the reality is more complicated. The construction and maintenance of the connected Lightning Lightning knot includes technical skills and capital requirements that most users are not ready to manage. This is not a failure: it is simply a reflection of the Lightning design.
As a result of these barriers, many users turned into Customal solutions to reach the benefits of Lightning. The governor of guard and new ostrich such as Strike, Blink, Wallet of Satoshi, Cash App and other features such as URL Lightning, low -graphic instant transactions, type of reliability and user experience that people expect from fully applications with a banking feature. For some, this dependence on the guardian appears to be a compromise, and somewhat, it is. But more importantly, it reveals something that is often ignored: running the lightning infrastructure does not mean everyone.
Here’s the controversial part: this is completely good.
Lightning critics often, both within the Bitcoin community or among Altcoin promoters, frams these bites as evidence that lightning has failed, indicating that it should be replaced with something else completely. But this opinion lacks the mark. Instead of seeing these restrictions as fatal defects, it is more accurate and productive to understand the lightning network for what it really is: the infrastructure at the institution level.
In this context, the “institution’s degree” means strong, developed and reliable enough to the power of payments in the actual time of low services for important services. It is not something that every unofficial user will host. Lightning is designed for professional operators – Bitcoin exchange, payment processors, wallet developers and societal projects capable technically. For them, lightning is not a compromise, it is a competitive advantage.
Moreover, the Lightning Bitcoin network completes in several important ways and is increasingly available with neighboring technologies such as ECash Mints and other layer 2 solutions. It works as a global and open source financial infrastructure and insight without permission that any serious operator, anywhere in the world, can benefit from it. In essence, the lightning network develops in the mutual operating glue that connects the external systems to the bitcoin Blukin.
Not everyone will run the lightning knot, and this is good. This reality does not reduce the importance of Lightning in the Bitcoin road map. On the contrary, Lightning is a founding layer that provides a wide range of tools and services. Away from being a central power, it actually enhances decentralization by opening the door to payments without permission anywhere in the world, creating new types of economic actors that have not been possible before.
A great example of this is the Kenyan Bitcoin payment application presence. This app allows users to spend Bitcoin in any merchant or service that accepts M-PESA using the Lightning Network.
M-Pesa is a mobile money platform launched by Safari In Kenya that allows users to send and receive money and store it via mobile phones without the need for a traditional bank account. As of 2024, it serves more than 34 million users in Kenya, treats more than 30 billion transactions annually, and represents approximately 60 % of the country’s gross domestic product.
Thanks to Lightning, Tando creators can build a smooth and programmatic experience that deals directly with the M-PESA system, which greatly improves access to liquidity for Bitcoin users in Kenya. Because everyone and their grandmother in Kenya accept M-PESA, now with Tando, anyone can spend Bitcoin anywhere in Kenya-even in Maasai Mara.
Without lightning, Bitcoin will be on the series very slow to provide a practical experience of M-PESA daily transactions. Times of confirmation of transactions that are not appropriate for payments in actual time, especially in fast -paced retail settings. But by creating a Lightning portal that connects directly to the M-PESA governor, Tando has converted the payment scene to Bitcoin users in Kenya. Tando is evidence that Lightning opens up cases in the real world of buildings without the need to seek construction permission. The fact that lightning can be amazing.
Another excellent example can be seen on The Edge Lightning that gives business by comparing two new global regions: PayPal and Strike.
PayPalThe original online payment company, which was launched in 1998 and took more than 17 years to expand more than 200 countries. On the contrary, Strike, a much more specialized application created lightning and was launched in 2020, to more than 100 countries in only five years, reaching markets throughout Africa, Latin America, Europe, Asia and the Pacific. The global expansion of Strike is not only PayPal’s competitors in its scope, but rather greatly outperforms speed and ease, highlighting the unique advantages of building on modern infrastructure without borders such as the lightning network.
Strike Jack Mallers and his team greatly exceeded work directly with banks, instead choosing a partnership with Bitcoin exchanges around the world that has already established local banking relations in the markets they serve. These partners use the lightning network to immediately send the value across the border. When the user wants to convert the Strike app balance into a local currency, the partner is easy to exchange at the back end. This Strike strategy allowed the launch of a global paid global payment service, acceptable globally faster than ever.
Strike Bitcoin and unlimited Lightning capabilities to build a real global network, combining this technical feature while developing strong business to secure FIAT. While the old players remain different by traditional banking bars, Strike uses lightning to move the value instantly anywhere on this planet.
Lightning Network not only opens new doors for companies, but also allows both large and small permits within other open protocols. A major example is NSTR, which is a centrally designed protocol to support social media experiences and much more.
In a publication x“The greatest example of bitcoin is that the daily payments are Zaps on Nostr.” In the 2023 interview with politico, he discusses optimism on the basis of both Zaps Nostr and Lightning:
“It has also argued that the user experience on NSTR has already exceeded the Twitter experience, citing” Zaps “a feature that allows users to direct each other in Bitcoin – part of a vision in which information and money flow together via the Internet without obstructing.
Zaps on Nostr has evolved from the basic lightning bill to the Micropayment feature largely smooth thanks to William Casserin’s efforts, known JB55. Initially, users had to attach Bitcoin payment requests to the notes manually. But in early 2023, Casarine, the Customer of Damous’s Customer, authored NIP-57, where the types of events came 9734 (ZAP request) and 9735 (ZAP receipt), which represents an official Sdus such as the immediate bitcoin transfer, which works in ingenuity.
Based on the early Lightning integration of NSTR, Casarin’s vision helped convert Zaps into an original easy -to -use feature across each prominent Nostr customer. The ZAPS input raised an increase in NOSTR adoption: by June 2023, Nostr users have sent more than a million people via a network of approximately half a million users.
It only requires Lightning Wallet and Nostr client, Zaps has canceled mediators and creators who have been enabled to receive direct or low information payments for their posts, flows or other content. This smooth integration of social interaction and lightning economy in Bitcoin has determined the method of exchange of value online, a small or large treatment at once.
Although ordinary users usually do not manage their lightning infrastructure, the network enables small teams and skilled individuals to provide financial services once the bank. This dynamic is rapidly developing to a wider direction, which leads lightning towards increasing decentralization through community infrastructure.
Imagine if every local Bitcoin meeting had a person running the Lightning knot for their community. This can provide alive or area for a reliable operator and a course, such as almost modern credit unions. In such a model, the lightning infrastructure will not only dominate through the large institution. Instead, confidence and guidance will be distributed between the smaller and translated actors with different incentives and builders who give priority to flexibility, privacy and access to size or profit.
This dynamic actually happens today! I personally saw this at work through initiatives such as Praia Bitcoin in Brazil and Los Angeles in Argentina. Both projects link popular societies with localized -based payment systems. Together, Bitcoin and Lightning Network enables the popular alternative to traditional banking services – which is beautiful.
Finally, I will be intended, not to mention many amazing projects such as Zeus, Phenix, Perez, Aqua, MUUN and other lightning portfolios that create to create various user experiences. These teams build applications rich in features without sacrificing the user’s nursery while moving at the boundaries that are still proportional to Bitcoin payments in 2025. In a world where Bitcoin and Lightning are still specialized, speculative behavior is as always, as providing excellent impressive friendly experiences is not great. Although they are not perfect, many of these projects do so exactly. The fact that many builders offer a wide range of ways to interact with lightning that give consumers a real choice and promote my basic argument in the end.
The lightning network was never supposed to serve every user in every way, and this is exactly the reason for its work. This does not fail because ordinary users may prefer guard wallets. It succeeds because developers, companies and organizers use them to solve the problems of the real world without the need for permission.
What Lightning offers is not a global simplicity, it is a focused and highly march program. It is the infrastructure that blocks bitcoin to people, and provides innovative solutions to the edges of the global economy. When we stop expecting lightning to be something that cannot be, we begin to understand its true goal: a dynamic and founding layer for those who build the future of financial freedom.
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This article is an article that appeared in the latest version of Bitcoin magazine, The Lightning Issue. We share it here to show the ideas that were explored during the full number.
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