Thread by @LucasNuzzi

Want some reassurance? Look at the growth of the #LightningNetwork in 2018:

4 clients live
18 software libraries
17 wallets
Capacity ATH

-Out of all technologies I've covered, Lightning is, by far, the best positioned to capture value from the real economy in 2019. A thread 👇

I see Lightning as a primitive that businesses can use to design optimal economic incentives.

Its exponentially scalable, highly divisible, and instantly reconcilable nature is unique, AND it is powered by the cryptoasset with the most liquidity and regulatory clarity: Bitcoin.

Lightning is orders of magnitude more efficient than that of centralized incumbents (ie Visa), which makes its use irresistible.

Before you shill your bag, consider that Lightning's DEcentralized counterparts are years behind in terms of development and network activity.

Beyond simple payments, Lightning will also change how traffic and content are monetized; from podcasts to news outlets.

Consider that monetization through ads makes up the F and G in FANG. It's an industry that lacks innovation and whose model is increasingly inefficient.

Lightning is a technological primitive because it frees businesses from the ad-for-views model in a flexible way. And I expect creative structures to emerge where ad revenue is split between service and consumer, where viewers pays to consume content or perhaps get paid to do so.

You've probably heard this pitch before from projects like BAT. It makes sense, right?

But unlike BAT, Lighting's underlying technology does not rely on break-throughs in consensus design, regulatory clarity, or a "utility token" system.

Lightning's foundations already exist and are well-understood. The most onerous technical challenges of this technology have been mostly figured out. Lightning is not a white paper, it's not an idea, it doesn't rely on an overly complicated, untested architecture.
It just works.

And I'm optimistic because things are moving fast.

@alexbosworth's Yalls yalls.org is already experimenting with a system of micropayments for blogging. It's just a matter of time until more services pop up. The challenge now is to abstract complexity for users.

On that front, @wbobeirne's Joule lightningjoule.com Chrome extension took everyone by surprise. It's easy to use and beautifully designed.

I expect it to be as significant to Lightning as MetaMask was to Ethereum in 2017, since it considerably improves user experience.

@pierre_rochard's one-click node launcher is also a great step toward broader adoption. You should check it out: medium.com/@pierre_rochar…

@CremeDeLaCrypto had a good presentation on the merits of a layered approach to scalability on Consensus Invest. I agree with him and would add that, even if Lightning were to fail, its greatest merit is that its failure would not affect Bitcoin. This cannot be overstated.

Neutrino is the final piece of the equation since it doesn't require users to run a node. I expect it to activate on Bitcoin sometime in 2019, but my guess is that broader adoption will come before that, possibly through intermediaries.

Stay tuned for #wumbo.