If everyone on earth was using lightning, I suspect most users would be using custodial lightning wallet providers (e.g. "Wallet of Satoshi" is very popular now). I doubt even 1% of people would elect to host their own node (although it's important that they be able to). 500 bytes is also a high estimate of channel opening transaction size.
The socially efficient end state I expect looks a lot like the current state of affairs (in terms of payment network topology), except A) small institutions (including individuals) have direct access to the same financial network used by large institutions if they want it, B) the financial network is trustless, C) transactions are non-repudiable. This is to be expected - there's no reason to expect Bitcoin would cause a radically different experience for the typical end user, except insofar as they will capture whatever passive benefits may be associated with saving in a hard currency. Paypal et al is already quite convenient and technically amenable to microtransactions. The benefits of Bitcoin, while substantial, mostly occur at the margins.
Bitcoin nodes are distinct from lightning nodes. I was talking about the latter. Also I think "everyone" is a hyperbole - surely some people will prefer custodial solutions.
If everyone on earth was using lightning, I suspect most users would be using custodial lightning wallet providers (e.g. "Wallet of Satoshi" is very popular now). I doubt even 1% of people would elect to host their own node (although it's important that they be able to). 500 bytes is also a high estimate of channel opening transaction size.
The socially efficient end state I expect looks a lot like the current state of affairs (in terms of payment network topology), except A) small institutions (including individuals) have direct access to the same financial network used by large institutions if they want it, B) the financial network is trustless, C) transactions are non-repudiable. This is to be expected - there's no reason to expect Bitcoin would cause a radically different experience for the typical end user, except insofar as they will capture whatever passive benefits may be associated with saving in a hard currency. Paypal et al is already quite convenient and technically amenable to microtransactions. The benefits of Bitcoin, while substantial, mostly occur at the margins.