[beeflet]

On the lightning network, fees are distributed to rent-seeking intermediaries instead of miners, yet the network is still dependent on the security from the miners. The lightning network is parasitic to bitcoin.

Blocks are empty because people decided that bitcoin was not a feasible means of transaction nearly a decade ago during the blocksize war.

[derangedHorse]

If you think peers on the Lightning network are “rent-seeking” intermediaries then you don’t understand what Lightning is. Peers allow us to circumvent the need for every counterparty to make a channel with one another and allow us to maintain privacy via onion routing. There’s no rent seeking here. Nodes pay fees to one another because these benefits come at the cost of liquidity for participating routing nodes.