You Won’t Believe Why Bitcoin’s Lightning Network May Really Be the World’s Tiniest Roadblock

by

Fifteen years after he first sprinkled his magic code dust on Bitcoin Core—back when it was possible for anyone with a basement and enough pizza boxes to “help” on the internet—Jeff Garzik remains convinced that Bitcoin is destined to outlive IKEA furniture, Twinkies, and possibly cockroaches. Truly, if you want a global financial protocol with more longevity than your phone charger, this is it. But about Bitcoin’s famous Lightning Network scaling project? Garzik’s about as impressed as you’d be discovering your plane’s emergency life vest is actually an inflatable pool noodle. 🦆

Lightning Network: All Sizzle, Little Steak?

“Lightning is a failure. Very few people are using it, and it kept BTC locked on a bad sidetrack,” Garzik pronounced, inadvertently launching a thousand spatulas across Twitter. The network, in his eyes, was more marketing department smoke and mirrors than actual meat and potatoes. “Look at the outcome,” he challenged. “Seven years in, and we have maybe 5,000 BTC zipping around. Meanwhile, Wrapped Bitcoin is over there on Ethereum, feeling smug with 25 times as much. The capital’s already picked its horse—it’s just not Lightning.”

The numbers are, frankly, so humiliating that even Lightning’s dog might move to Ethereum given the choice. Public Lightning capacity sits around 5,300 BTC ($500 million). Wrapped BTC on Ethereum and its sidekick tokens loom at over 130,000 BTC—a.k.a. “more money than the GDP of several picturesque island nations.” Lightning has about 16,000 visible nodes. Wrapped BTC? Over 600,000 addresses. At this point, Garzik might be tempted to hand out brochures for “Careers in Layer-2 Augmented Reality” at Bitcoin conventions.

But why the traffic jam? Garzik blames it on Bitcoin’s “vetocracy”—picture a town hall meeting where everyone gets a veto stamp and the only thing achieved by consensus is arguing about whether coffee should be served hot or tepid. “Bitcoin development basically stopped in 2017. Any time someone tries to sneak in something new, the politics throw a spanner in the works. So the builders left. They went to places where changing things doesn’t require a multi-year UN negotiation or a goat sacrifice.”

He summed up the philosophical part with a line that dropped like a punch at a polite tea party: “Bitcoin is a social network first, monetary network second.” In other words: codes change, coins come and go, but Internet commenters will always find a way to block upgrades.

Garzik’s own mad science, Hemi, is a sidechain project where a fully validating Bitcoin node sits inside a roll-up that could pass as an Ethereum doppelganger. The whole contraption is secured with proof-of-proof mining and BitVM fraud proofs (basically, it’s Bitcoin on Ethereum, but with the volume turned up to 11—think Monster Truck Rally meets blockchain). “Smart contracts can actually read and act on Bitcoin Layer-1 without trusting some guy named Bob to hang onto your coins,” Garzik declared, with a nod to every bridge hack ever.

“Everything useful invented in crypto—stablecoins, DeFi, identity—will end up on Bitcoin eventually,” he said. “The only speed bump is whether Lightning Network superfans keep waving sticks at progress like it’s a Halloween ghost.” 👻

Lightning’s defenders point out that capacity stats don’t count private channels, and routing revenues have finally started to look interesting—“interesting” here meaning enough for at least three professional operators to buy lunch. Even the most bullish reports admit public capacity has more or less flatlined for two whole years. It grows in dollar terms, sure, but as BTC coins go? Meh.

Garzik’s take on Lightning is deliciously tart: “Great if you want to buy a latte at warp speed. Useless if you want anything from lending to launching derivatives to settling billion-dollar trades. If Bitcoin wants to be more than the world’s most expensive coffee app, it needs programmable trust—and Lightning just can’t deliver.”

Bitcoin: Like a Rock, Only More Boring and Permanent

Despite the tech drama, Garzik is still bullish on the king coin itself. “Bitcoin is here to stay. Imagine gold, only less shiny and a lot more digital.” Every incentive—the regulatory clarity, the accumulation by sovereign funds, your neighbor who won’t stop talking about it—points back to Bitcoin. In a world of pick-your-own-adventure protocols, Bitcoin is the story that never ends.

But here’s the kicker: “Inevitability is not the same as progress. Bitcoin isn’t going away. But it isn’t getting a jetpack either. If the goal is self-sovereignty for the entire population of earth, we need max programmability and minimum drama. That means Layer-2s. Lightning? Time to check the rear-view mirror.”

The only thing left to settle the debate will be cold, hard numbers: which path hoovers up more capital, which scales more effortlessly, and—critically—how much users are willing to cough up in fees. For now, Garzik leaves us with this: Bitcoin’s future is as unshakeable as ever, but Lightning might need to find a new party to attend. 🥳

At press time, BTC traded at $108,838. (Yes, really. No time machine required.)

Read More

2025-07-04 18:19