Does, or will, Bitcoin Core support Lightning? I vaguely understand what Lightning is, and would like to take advantage of it. However, actually using it seems extremely &quot;fuzzy&quot;.
If it requires some separate software to be trusted, installed, configured and maintained, then I'm afraid it's off the table for me.
I already run Bitcoin Core. Will that get built-in support for Lightning? Or maybe it already has it?
I'm very worried that potentially large fees will prove a major obstacle in front of potential paying customers who don't want to spend so many satoshis just to make such a small payment to my service. I wouldn't want to pay the same amount in fees as what the service costs, myself. That's why Lightning appears to attractive to me, regardless of the speed.
If this thing is going to remain an &quot;add-on&quot;, which you need to separately worry about and fiddle with, I'm afraid it will go the way of the Sega 32X or Mega CD. I really hope that's no longer the case, or at least won't be for much longer.
A sketch of Lightning Network support was previously proposed to Bitcoin Core.
Conceptually, most contributors think it is outside of the scope of the Bitcoin Core project which should be limited to be a robust backbone for the Bitcoin network.
Lightning Network implementations &quot;on top&quot; of Bitcoin Core already exist, the three most mature ones being C-lightning, LND and Eclair.
Given the complexity of the Lightning Network, specialized softwares are in my opinion required.