The Lightning Network: Turning Bitcoin into Money
When will the blockchain ecosystem provide something with that &quot;WOW I need this in my life right now&quot; factor to the average user?<p>Google went from a research project to incorporated and usable on the internet in roughly two years with a total investment of about $2mm in 2022 money. Let&#x27;s just say the pace of innovation had some serious roadblocks at the time (they literally had to build their own servers and host them in a garage). Not to mention the status of dev tools, frameworks&#x2F;libraries, developer availability, etc in 1998 vs today.<p>We are four years in to A16z alone raising roughly $16 BILLION dollars with their crypto funds. For at least half a decade it&#x27;s been routine to see announcements of various blockchain companies with $5mm seed rounds (and beyond). Follow-up Series A and beyond in the hundreds of millions with multi-billion dollar valuations.<p>I&#x27;ve been following the space extremely closely for over five years and I have yet to see an application or solution with that &quot;WOW I need this in my life right now&quot; factor. I still don&#x27;t know a single person outside of the tech scene that uses anything blockchain related other than trading on an exchange.<p>Bitcoin is 13 years old with an ecosystem that has had an incredible amount of investment and man hours thrown at it yet we&#x27;re still getting research papers on how to make the original premise of bitcoin (Peer to peer digital cash) actually usable at any practical scale.<p>I know LN has been live for some time yet looking at the best available numbers I can find it&#x27;s only being used by an absolutely insignificant number of the world&#x27;s five billion internet users (this goes for all other chains and L2+ that can be analyzed).<p>I don&#x27;t get it.