Business Owner Calls Lightning Network Fundamentally Flawed

The lightning network, an off-chain scalable solution for Bitcoin has faced criticism from a business owner in Australia, which went viral. Jason Smith who runs a media company in Australia recently tried using the Lightning network to make payments in Bitcoin to the employees situated in the Philippines, but his experience with the LN was quite distasteful, to say the least.

Smith says his first experience of using the lightning network was filled with frustration and nowhere near the feedbacks, he has been hearing from the crypto space calling it the next best thing for the Bitcoin network. He went on to claim that the fundamental structure of the off-chain is riddled with problems.

Bitcoin and its Never Ending Scalability Issues

Bitcoin blockchain started facing scalability issues as the number of users grew exponentially post the 2017 dramatic price rise. The increased number of users on the network was for sure a reason to rejoice, but it also brought a ton of problem along with it, like the slow transaction speed and high transaction fee, the two fundamental aspects which bitcoin promised to better in comparison to fiat.

Developers and community got together to find a solution, and lightning network as an off-chain solution was agreed upon by the majority. The off-chain solution is one of the most controversial and debated topics as many critics believe the use of lightning network would add more problems than it would solve. The biggest concern seems to be the centralization and re-routing transactions which could create a window for the scammers.

Although the LN is still under the development and the community keeps reassuring consumers that once its completely developed people would be able to see the benefits. However, the current form of the lightning network is half baked and the merchants trying to use it faces a ton of technical shortcomings and connectivity issues.

Jason Smith Explains His Problems

The Australian who runs a media company was trying to pay his employees based in the Philippines with the help of the Lightning network, but his experience was so bad that he got on twitter to tell the world that LN has a ton of issues.

Jason tried to use LN to facilitate payments by using a custodial LN application and Pierre Rochard’s node launcher. He won some money on a betting side which he could not withdraw due to the absence of any incoming channels connected to his node with funds from the other side. When he complained about these fundamental issues to the community, he was assured that these problems would be sorted out as the development progress. However, Smith does not seem convinced. Hers is what he has to say,

“Now I’m told some of the Lightning problems will be solved with certain developments but I assure you, the fundamental structure of lightning doesn’t suit me at all for my business — I want to pay my staff each month — Businesses can’t leave money tied up in Lightning channels.”

Apart from rerouting his own money through numerous windows, Smith quickly realized that the transaction fee for Bitcoin proponent was too high.

Jason Smith who was an avid Bitcoin bull and often conducted seminars for people to understand the digital asset feels disappointed with his latest experience and says,

“I also run bitcoin training seminars about bitcoin and I won’t be running anymore until I can actually see where this thing is heading — This high fee bullshit makes the network unusable for normal people, and lightning is not easy to use, which any scaling solution needs to be,”