1. It's not Bitcoin, it's a sidechain utilizing Bitcoin

2. It's not certain it can work in a decentralized way

It's bitcoin. It uses bitcoin, it's powered by bitcoin, it's bitcoin. The sidechain distinction isn't a helpful one if people end up using it by default.

Yes, it's uncertain it will work, but the point is that it's not inherently obvious that bitcoin can't accommodate Visa's transaction volume. The above comment made it seem like that's a given.

It uses Bitcoin but it is not Bitcoin. It has different security considerations, usage and it's fundamentally different. That it settles to Bitcoin does not make it become Bitcoin. Beef isn't a cow even though it uses (parts of) a cow.

The second part I agree with. According to Satoshi:

> Bitcoin can scale larger than the Visa Network

It's not obvious that this is false.

> 1. It's not Bitcoin, it's a sidechain utilizing Bitcoin

I think you're mixing lightning up with something else; lightning is not a sidechain[0]. In lightning, at every step participants create standard Bitcoin transactions that can be finalized and settled at any time by just publicly broadcasting them on the Bitcoin network. The participants hold off on broadcasting the transactions until they're done with the payment channel so that they save on transaction fees (and avoid bloating the blockchain). They're immune to counterparty risk like normal transactions are, and it doesn't rely on any central or trusted authorities.

[0] https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/greg-maxwell-lightning-...

Maybe sidechain isn't the best term but I don't know a better one.

You're saying it yourself, it creates standard Bitcoin transactions (not lightning transactions). They hold off on broadcasting them, but that may mean if they both go offline they loose their state. It's using Bitcoin as a settlement layer but it's still not interchangeable with Bitcoin.

It still has not been shown that LN can even work in a decentralized fashion.

It uses Bitcoin and it may even become the default way to transact and be better in any way. But it doesn't matter, Lightning is not, and will never be, Bitcoin.

How can this distinction not be clear?

>You're saying it yourself, it creates standard Bitcoin transactions (not lightning transactions). They hold off on broadcasting them, but that may mean if they both go offline they loose their state.

Yeah, the guarantees aren't exactly the same. Personally I expect that the risks will be for the most part smoothed over by things like lightning software that automatically syncs the state of payment channels between all of your devices for redundancy.

>It's using Bitcoin as a settlement layer but it's still not interchangeable with Bitcoin.

When a payment channel is settled by any of the participants, it's normal Bitcoin that comes out.

>It uses Bitcoin and it may even become the default way to transact and be better in any way. But it doesn't matter, Lightning is not, and will never be, Bitcoin.

I really think that's splitting hairs. If it becomes the standard way to send Bitcoin around, such that nearly everyone talking about making or receiving payments in Bitcoin is using Lightning, and if it does end up working very well in practice with many transactions per second, then I think it's more than fair to argue against statements like "Bitcoin can't scale up to VISA volume". Are you insisting on always explicitly referring to them as a combination ("Bitcoin/Lightning")? Kind of reminds me of the losing battle fought by some to correct all references to Linux as "GNU/Linux"...

But to open a channel you do have to have a transaction on the blockchain with a smart contract right? So there's now two transactions for every channel opened which means unless channels are reused for multiple transactions between two parties there's no net benefit right?

Right, the benefit comes from reusing opened payment channels. A key thing to know is that payment channels can be used transitively: if Alice and Bob have an open channel, and Bob and Charlie also have an open channel, then Alice can send a payment through the connections to Charlie without any risk of Bob stealing the money. If many people keep open connections to a couple people each, then it becomes ridiculously likely that a path could be found through already-open payment channels between any two participants.

But also each channel has to have the total amount being sent precommited in the initial channel opening so in your example if Alice want's to send Charlie 1 BTC the balance in both the A-B and B-C channels has to be at least 1 BTC. Which kind of demands some pretty central clearing hubs in the lightning network that will need a large amount of BTC locked into these channels.