How Will Mass Adoption of the Lightning Network Happen?

- How do you see the broader mass adoption of the lightning network in the future? The broader mass adoption of the lightning network will happen through the primary user interface and the primary user interfaces wallets. This is exactly the same issue we have with every other blockchain.

A blockchain will advance only as fast as its wallets do

A blockchain is only as good, is only as capable and its features advanced only as fast as its most popular wallets do, and a feature that you wrote in the protocol that isn't in the wallet is a feature that doesn't exist as far as the users are concerned. A feature that you wrote that is in a wallet, but it's too difficult to use is a feature that doesn't exist as far as users are concerned. So the frontline of development of any blockchain or layer two network is the development of the wallet technology itself. The more sophisticated the wallets are, the better the user interfaces are, the more they are able to abstract the difficult parts and complex parts of this technology and make it appear simple to users, the more successful they will be.

Evolution of web browsers

If you followed previous technology development over open protocols, you will see the same trends everywhere. The very early web browsers were a mess, and they had a lot of the difficulties of the underlying protocol being reflected in the user's face and made it very, very difficult to use web browsers for certain types of applications. Imagine when you're waiting for the latency of a reload of an entire page over TCP in order to move your map one-inch to the right when you're mapping. That's how maps worked in the beginning, if you don't remember it, congratulations, you're younger than I am, but I certainly remember it. Web browsers were difficult to use, and nowadays, it's not that the backend protocols got significantly faster or significantly better, it's just that the browser has buried that complexity. Browsers have become infinitely more complex and sophisticated, and they present an infinitely simpler interface to the users by hiding that complexity and also managing the complexity of the underlying protocols to make the user's life easier. That is a very difficult task. It requires a lot of sophistication and user interface, user experience design, as well as the management of very large software projects, and still, in the Bitcoin and lightning space, we're still in the very, very early days, but you can already see the trends. The lightning wallets are getting much better, just like the Bitcoin wallets got much better over several iterations and the better and simpler a wallet gets to use, the easier it is for people to use.

A good wallet should hide the difference between Bitcoin and Lightning

Now the other thing is the fact that in the longterm, I expect that wallets will completely hide the difference between Bitcoin and lightning, but wallet shouldn't need to tell the user what channels they have, what balance they have in the channels, whether the channels are properly balanced, whether the payment they're making is on-chain or off-chain, whether the wallets is rebalancing channels in the backend or any of that. All of that should be hidden. You say, I want to pay this recipient by scanning a QR code and your wallet figures out if the payment is going to be over Bitcoin, if it's going to be over the lightning network, if channels need to be created or rebalanced in order to effectuate that payment, how long it's going to take, what fee it's going to take and act accordingly, invisibly in the background and some lightning wallets already doing that. So in the future, I expect the user experience will effectively be seamless. You scan a QR code, you say pay and your wallet figures out the rest just like a modern web browser does when it comes to the underlying HTTP, TCP and IP protocols. (bright music) If you enjoyed this video, please subscribe, like and share. All my work is shared for free, so if you want to support it, join me on Patriot. (bright music)