The trading volume indicators are impressive, but there is still a huge gap in the popularity of daily payments.

Written by: Christina Comben

Translated by: Chopper, Foresight News

This month, Bitcoin developer Paul Sztorc sparked huge controversy within the crypto circle with sharp and straightforward comments on the Lightning Network: the Bitcoin community has overestimated the actual performance of the Lightning Network and has been deceiving itself.

On October 4, Sztorc posted on X platform (https://x.com/Truthcoin/status/2106776378230046967), stating, "Most people are unaware of how bad the Lightning Network actually is because there has been a massive conspiracy over the years to deliberately misreport the user experience of the Lightning Network."

Sztorc stated that people do not realize how bad the Lightning Network is

He suggested that custodial Lightning services account for over 80% of Lightning Network payment traffic and characterized this type of promotion as "a large-scale fraudulent propaganda, comparable to Elizabeth Holmes' Theranos scam." Theranos was a company that faked blood testing equipment, and its founder was ultimately convicted of fraud.

The Lightning payments themselves have privacy features, and relying solely on open-chain data cannot accurately quantify the proportion of payments accounted for by custodial services. Cointelegraph magazine invited Sztorc for an interview, but did not receive a response.

However, his harsh criticism has reintroduced the core issue that Bitcoin developers have debated for years: Has the Lightning Network actually made Bitcoin more usable? Or has the community invested too many resources betting on this second-layer protocol while deliberately ignoring its shortcomings?

Usability Issues with the Lightning Network

The original intention of the Lightning Network was to enable faster, lower-cost Bitcoin transactions without the need to record each payment individually on the Bitcoin main chain. However, the underlying operating mechanisms often create friction for ordinary users and merchants.

In the traditional financial system, users can complete payments by simply swiping a card or clicking a mouse. But the Lightning Network relies on payment channels, requiring liquidity to be available at the right time and nodes. Cross-node routing transfers are prone to failure, especially with large payments requiring multiple intermediaries, increasing the probability of failure.

Alex Bosworth, head of liquidity for the Lightning Network, also admitted this month, "The brutal reality is that under the requirements of privacy and peer-to-peer architecture, Lightning payments are much slower compared to tap-to-pay."

Additionally, setting up nodes and managing channels presents too high a technical barrier for ordinary users, who just want to make payments simply. This is also a core reason why the estimated proportion of custodial services is skewed high: custodial services are easier to operate and more stable, but at the cost of having to trust intermediaries.

Daily Payment Success Rate Can Reach 99.7%?

Jesse Shrader, co-founder and CEO of Lightning Network infrastructure provider Amoss, admitted that liquidity rules can be difficult to understand at first encounter, but he believes this issue can be "easily solved" with existing tools or automated services.

He stated, "For everyday small payments around $100, most users can achieve 99% reliability on the native network." Amoss's simulated calculations show that the success rate for $100 transactions can reach 99.66%.

However, this is just an ideal figure and not actual measured statistics of the overall user experience. As the fine print of advertisements states: your actual experience may vary.

In April 2026, a discussion post on Reddit featured a user who said that, although he was impressed with the technical progress of the Lightning Network, he still questioned its practicality in everyday consumer scenarios: "There is still a huge gap in reality. The coffee shops, supermarkets, and gas stations I've been to all use Visa and Mastercard terminals; NFC tap payments are the industry standard. No merchant is going to deploy a Lightning node at the cash register, now or in the future."

Have Developers Solved the Issues?

Danny Stagg, market leader at Bitcoin payment infrastructure provider Breez, stated that many critiques regarding the Lightning Network user experience are outdated.

He told this publication, "In the year 2026, these critiques are not fair, but were indeed valid in the past. For many years, developers and users simply had to understand complex concepts like channels and inbound liquidity just to complete payments."

He believes that network experience has improved significantly over the past two years, and the new generation of infrastructure has hidden much of the underlying complex logic. "The user experience of non-custodial solutions can now match that of custodial services."

Now, wallets and applications wanting to integrate Lightning payments no longer require users to manage channels or run nodes themselves; the intricate underlying work can be handled by developers and service providers.

Breez CEO Roy Sheinfeld mentioned that AI code tools are lowering the barriers for developers to build Bitcoin applications, leading to a rapid increase in inquiries from potential partners. Stagg stated, "That's why more partners are integrating Bitcoin payments every quarter."

However, increased attention from developers does not mean that ordinary people will use the Lightning Network for everyday consumption.

Data Only Reflects Activity, Not Payment Success

Financial service provider River's 2026 Bitcoin adoption report estimates that in November 2025 alone, the Lightning Network completed 5.22 million transactions, with a trading volume surpassing $1 billion.

In November 2025, the transaction volume of the Lightning Network exceeded $1 billion. Source: River

This number appears impressive, but the number of transactions is less than the historical peak of 6.6 million transactions in August 2023. This indicates that the growth rate of transaction numbers has not kept pace with the expansion of network funding circulation.

Crypto payment service provider CoinGate's data shows that in the first half of 2026, its platform clients completed 782,403 cryptocurrency payment orders, a year-over-year increase of 21.4%; among them, the Lightning Network accounted for 9.6% of the platform's total Bitcoin payments.

The Lightning Network accounted for 9.6% of total Bitcoin payments. Source: CoinGate

What Constitutes True Success?

Shrader believes that unless one is a party to the transactions, it is impossible to account for the overall payment-related data of the network, so he does not agree with Sztorc's assertion that "80% of Lightning payments come from custodial services." "Anyone who claims that they can prove custodial share is 80% based solely on public data, I would remain skeptical."

Stagg stated that this assertion describes a past version of the Lightning Network. Early custodial services offered more convenience, while non-custodial products had yet to catch up. The 2023 River report data shows that only 1 in 8 users is a self-custody user. However, there is currently a lack of up-to-date authoritative data, and the debate over custodial traffic share has no conclusion yet.

Metrics such as network capacity, payment volume, and developer interest also need to be approached with caution. Each metric measures different dimensions, and no single one can prove the usability of the Lightning Network.

Merchants are indeed processing Lightning payments, and developers are continuously encapsulating underlying technologies, but technological advancements do not equate to usability for the mainstream public.

The real controversy may not lie in whether the Lightning Network has failed, but whether supporters have conflated "the capabilities the network can achieve" with "the real usage situations of ordinary people."