Ex-purist like me bought our own full node and fiddle with it all weekend just to play around with the lightning network.

Aint' nobody else got time for that.

Background: I was around for August 2017 hard-fork, running one of (then) ~2000 worldwide verification nodes (i.e. not mining, rule-setting): I can assure you the lack of offchain usage was predictable.

For the diehard technologists, it's interesting to note that Satoshi's original whitepaper called for a much larger blocksize (32MB, verse 1MB pre-SegWit/Lightning); myself, I ran BitcoinUnlimited with 16MB block acceptance well into 2018 (I'm anti anti anti SegWit/Lightning).

For some reason, years of BIPs have claimed that "1MB is necessary due to bandwidth limitations..." which even in 2017 was horseshit... but now it's 2024 and I can get 300mbps fiber for $57.99/month (with a ping <3ms).

HODL.

My understanding is that miners wanted small blocks and have hobbled the protocol for them.

I'm not sure what caused your belief, but:

Miners are (and always have been) allowed to mine blocks containing zero transactions (i.e. ~0kB, not including necessities). It's us nodes that choose to reject/accept (of course there is Venn overlap).

This was common until block congestion actually started encouraging senders to include transaction fees; these [still!-]voluntarily fees represent a healthy addition to the blockreward, so most miners incur the minimal overhead for much-greater profit.

Yet zero-transaction blocks continue to be mined (albeit less-frequently).

Because LN is a centralized service that 100% defeats the purpose of cryptocurrency, it's weird so many have fallen for the scam.

Bitcoin Cash (BCH) functions as Bitcoin, digital cash, still, Bitcoin (BTC) is a digital Ponzi scheme for morons run by the US government.

Do you understand the downside of large blocks?

Do you understand that the block limit was set fourteen years ago, and that bandwidth and storage have increased exponentially since then?

It was also introduced as a temporary spam measure.

So right, but the issue is that block size increases only get you a linear increase in transaction rates which doesn't really address the problem (would 50 t/s somehow resolve any blockchain congestion?). So you make your currency less secure, risk chain splits but haven't even really solved any problems

If the hardware is improving exponentially, then increasing the block size on the same curve is also an exponential improvement.

Layer 2 is helpful but does not entirely remove the need for space on chain. In LN for example, every channel opening and closing uses block space.

Nothing centralized about it and it's not a service. I can open a Lightning channel to my friend and make as many transactions as I want. Only the final difference is broadcasted to the Bitcoin blockchain. A similar method was originally suggested by Satoshi for scaling Bitcoin, so I don't know how it could be a "scam".

Why use lightning when you can use visa?

Hint hint hint