Lightning and e-cash doesn't pay (enough) for network security. Big players may even have unpublished zero-conf channels and pay nothing. The argument that on-chain fees will be so high in the future doesn't convince me. People will choose cheaper ways for payments and the network will get insecure and useless.
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> People will choose cheaper ways for payments, and the network will get insecure and useless.
This is an assumption that more people will use Lightning, thereby resulting in less onchain activites and hence poor security, but that assumption is largely incorrect.
If anything, the use of Bitcoin via on-chain and Lightning will actually be balanced out because, if more people start using Lightning, there'll be fewer transactions on-chain, hence on-chain fees will drastically reduce, making it an incentive again for people to use on-chain, especially since it ensures better finality and security than Lightning.
Also, the idea of mobile Lightning nodes makes it a lot easier. With mobile Lightning nodes like what you have in the Valet Bitcoin wallet, people can seamlessly use Lightning, as well as easily switch to on-chain usage when it becomes more economically incentivized.
But the ratio of transactions happening on the Bitcoin on-chain network will always be higher than the ratio of transactions happening on the Lightning network. The finality and security guarantee of using Bitcoin on-chain is why this assumption will always be true.
> People will choose cheaper ways for payments, and the network will get insecure and useless.
This is an assumption that more people will use Lightning, thereby resulting in less onchain activites and hence poor security, but that assumption is largely incorrect.
If anything, the use of Bitcoin via on-chain and Lightning will actually be balanced out because, if more people start using Lightning, there'll be fewer transactions on-chain, hence on-chain fees will drastically reduce, making it an incentive again for people to use on-chain, especially since it ensures better finality and security than Lightning.
Also, the idea of mobile Lightning nodes makes it a lot easier. With mobile Lightning nodes like what you have in the Valet Bitcoin wallet (https://github.com/standardsats/valet/releases), people can seamlessly use Lightning, as well as easily switch to on-chain usage when it becomes more economically incentivized.
But the ratio of transactions happening on the Bitcoin on-chain network will always be higher than the ratio of transactions happening on the Lightning network. The finality and security guarantee of using Bitcoin on-chain is why this assumption will always be true.