[chill1]

Yes, an on-chain transaction is required to open a channel. But once open you can continue to use it forever, or until you (or your counter-party) decide to close it.

Lightning Network adoption is slow and steady. There are several newbie-friendly mobile wallet apps available [1][2][3]. Some nice improvements have been developed and pushed live in the last 18 months (e.g watchtowers [4] and atomic multi-path payments (AMP) [5]). There are now five Lightning Network node implementations (lnd, eclair, c-lightning, rust lightning, Electrum). And there are hardware projects working to bring LN into the physical space - one of which is my own project, a Lightning-only Bitcoin ATM named "Bleskomat" [6].

[1] https://phoenix.acinq.co/

[2] https://www.walletofsatoshi.com/ (!!) <-- custodial

[3] https://breez.technology/

[4] https://github.com/lnbook/lnbook/blob/8d2582e51eb615c850b24e...

[5] https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/lightning-dev/20...

[6] https://www.bleskomat.com/

[twox2]

Thanks for the references!