And soon enough channel factories should make it possible to create multiple lightning channels at once, so an end-user will never pay the whole channel opening fee by themselves.
As long as Bitcoin's layer 1 stays secure/open/decentralized, the average non-whale user will be able to use it through these other layers just as easily.
So people are using Bitcoin through trusted (in the security sense[1]) intermediaries. These intermediaries are basically banks, no? Aren't they subject to all the same bad incentives as a "traditional" bank? Except their deposit are (probably?) not insured against loss.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trusted_third_party
> 'Trusted' means that a system needs to be trusted to act in your interests, but it has the option (either at will or involuntarily) to act against your interests.
In the long term, lightning is here and works, as exchanges keep integrating it, that's where most of the end-user funds for small amounts would live.
1: https://finance.yahoo.com/finance/news/bitgo-expands-cold-st...
To me it says that only rich whales get to transact in bitcoin.
Pretty sad that now regular people get excluded from something that was conceived as p2p internet cash.