L-Apps & Building

Cross-posted from stacker.news

Will Sutton - August 27, 2024

LN economics are anti-exciting

Yeah, lightning has by far the lowest "yield" of any project out there. Estimates as low as 2% for running a routing node. Pretty much every other crypto project promises at least double digit yield. On top of that, crypto promises huge number-go-up events on the horizon. Further, all lightning companies combined have less than 1% of the on-chain capital deployed to them. While most other projects take huge pre-mines for insiders. So lightning has low yield, capped upside, and almost no starting capital of its own to disburse. In other words: all the financing tricks and marketing tricks which make starting a speculative venture in every other sphere of crypto so easy are not available to us.

LApp economics ain't pretty either

Building tech on lightning has an similar feeling and it's easy to turn envious seeing lots of other fluff startups in both crypto and non-crypto get easy investments, get connections made for them, and even if it fails they get acqui-hired .But 99% of venture capital is not going to consider backing a lightning company. So those easy short term wins - money, status, validation - aren't walking through the door tomorrow. But a hacker just might, and zero your funds. This is no country for old men.

Why do we do this?

From a man who chose to do something really hard without a clear reason: "It is not the mountain we conquer, but ourselves." That might be the right mindset for people who are battling the really bad odds in this industry. We ourselves cannot conquer the crony capitalists, the fed, the world financial system. It's our own selves that we can battle: our laziness, close-mindedness, fear, greed, and envy of others. You climb that mountain one painstaking breath at a time. Look to the left and to the right, death falls into a crevasse. It's strangely beautiful up here, but keep looking forward because if you stop you will die. But if that's not you, yeah turn back now. Like I said before, the yield sucks.