[nullc]

That was a conservative assumption at a multiple of the entire worldwide financial transaction volume... utilizing old technology.

The same volume without lightning would require blocks that were terabytes, which is obviously unworkable at the current state of technology.

[phillipsjk]

I disagree that the LN paper made conservative assumptions.

A "black swan" event like a major lightning hub going down may force more channel closings than the network (as currently implemented) has time to process before time-out.

The LN simply does not work if the base layer is congested.