is that the exact opposite of a ledger of every transaction? off ledger transactions? it seems like its giving up some of the idealistic poetic beauty, even if it is practical.
The ledger of every transaction has only ever been a means to an end, that end being a cryptocurrency... and it's still necessary in Lightning Network as a way to resolve fraud and as a monetary backing, it's just not used in every single transaction.
In practice, a ledger of every transaction that is copied to the hard drives of a sufficient amount of bitcoin users is a terrible idea. It doesn't scale, at all. We need better solutions. Lightning Network is one that's potentially viable in the short term - and we're seeing more people play with radically different cryptocurrency designs (e.g. Iota) in the long term.
In practice, a ledger of every transaction that is copied to the hard drives of a sufficient amount of bitcoin users is a terrible idea. It doesn't scale, at all. We need better solutions. Lightning Network is one that's potentially viable in the short term - and we're seeing more people play with radically different cryptocurrency designs (e.g. Iota) in the long term.