> you need at least two onchain transactions for every merchant you want to trade with
you absolutely do not. you open a channel once with some node and that channel can be used to send payments to all other nodes.
it's also simplistic view that you need 2 transactions per settlement of a channel because with channel factories you can batch-open-and-close-and-top-off many different channels with single (albeit fairly large) transaction.
systems like that grow organically and people get onboarded via many different methods, so it's not like tomorrow we will have a queue of 100 million people waiting for channels to be opened.
i do expect bitcoin network to hit capacity limit by transactions in future and we will see what it is going to look like, but i rather prefer bitcoin's glacial pace of becoming more and more efficient at ground layer, forcing all sorts of experimentation to happen in upper layers and in sidechains without ever compromising the foundation.
you absolutely do not. you open a channel once with some node and that channel can be used to send payments to all other nodes.
it's also simplistic view that you need 2 transactions per settlement of a channel because with channel factories you can batch-open-and-close-and-top-off many different channels with single (albeit fairly large) transaction.
systems like that grow organically and people get onboarded via many different methods, so it's not like tomorrow we will have a queue of 100 million people waiting for channels to be opened.
i do expect bitcoin network to hit capacity limit by transactions in future and we will see what it is going to look like, but i rather prefer bitcoin's glacial pace of becoming more and more efficient at ground layer, forcing all sorts of experimentation to happen in upper layers and in sidechains without ever compromising the foundation.