Is Bitcoin kidding itself about the Lightning Network?

Bitcoin developer Paul Sztorc ruffled a few feathers this month with a brutally blunt assessment of the Lightning Network: Bitcoiners are lying to themselves about how well it works.

“Most people don’t realize how bad the Lightning Network is,” Sztorc said in an October 4 post on X, “because there has been a vast, years long conspiracy to ***lie*** about the LN user experience.”

He argued that custodial Lightning services account for more than 80% of payments, and described their promotion as a “vast campaign of fraud on par with Elizabeth Holmes’ Theranos,” he said, referring to fake blood-testing device company whose founder was convicted of fraud.

Lightning payments are private by design, making it impossible to establish the custodial share from public network data alone. Sztorc did not respond to Magazine’s requests for comment.

But his scathing criticism resurfaces a topic Bitcoin developers have wrestled with for years: Has Lightning made Bitcoin easier to use, or has the community become so invested in Layer 2 protocol that it overlooks its shortcomings?

Lightning has a usability problem

Lightning was designed to enable faster, cheaper Bitcoin transactions without every payment having to be individually recorded on the blockchain, but its underlying mechanics have often created friction for users and businesses alike.