[hashmp]

At it's most basic, the Lightning network is just a way of implementing pre payment cards for Bitcoin.

Its over engineered and over complex. Which is demonstrated by the comments here trying to explain how it works.

No one has yet been able to explain how they will prevent one central hub from developing which by economies of scale will offer the lowest cost path through the network as it will have channels setup with everyone.

Ask yourself who will operate this hub and you'll understand why people want to implement this.