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Over 2 percent of the US’s electricity generation now goes to bitcoin
(arstechnica.com)
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
While Lightning doesn't need you to open a channel for every new recipient and has smart routing through other participants, I still think it's an inconvenient solution we don't have to take.
We have Solana, a 300.000+ TPS Layer-1. We have much smarter Ethereum Layer-2's that don't require this bullshit. We have many ways to tackle this problem, it's the hyperfocus on Bitcoin that, in my opinion, makes people go for Lightning network anyway.
Solana is incredibly centralized compared to BTC. The higher the TPS on your base layer the harder it is to meet the hardware requirements to run a full node. Scaling in layers is the solution.
Eth's L2s are a confusing mess. They offer a variety of degrees of security and decentralization, some of them, like Polygon, are a network run with only 15 validators, yikes! And many of them are secured by a single bridge. There have been plenty of notable bridge hacks, it is not fun when your currency gets depegged.
Solana currently has 1777 validators - which doesn't look like much compared to Bitcoin, but is actually way more than enough for any practical intents and purposes.