Forgive my stupidity. But are Lightning transactions more secure than zero-conf?
nope
firstly. LN's HTLC's can be renegged on.
secondly they can themselves become locked from utility due to OTHERS multiple route hops away.
thirdly they are not even in a 'balance' the originated coin of the peg would recognise.
fourthly in bitcoin a transaction is source to destination complete in one tx. (gets confirmed or not. pass or fail)
with LN it requires multiple htlc's where party of each HTLC all need to be online and communicating just for success(too many if's)
What peg? Let's avoid this old debate. Or please continue it on one of the other topics.
HTLC in LN are balance measured in msats
the CLTV locked bitcoin on the bitcoin network is measured in sats
bitcoin is locked and never moves from the bitcoin network
tokens on the LN network move and are in a different format
im now becoming shocked how many times i have to inform you of this and its like you just move onto a different topic, ignore its ever been told to you and you start again pretending 0 knowledge.
so instead of ignoring it. actually research it and move a step forward into actual knowledge
i dare you to search the bitcoin github for msat
i dare you to search the LN github for msat
you will see something on one that doesnt exist on the other
then
read the code of both githubs and you will see
a bitcoin 'coin' is 100,000,000 sat
a 'bitcoin' on LN is 100,000,000,000msat
here is some further lessons for you
https://github.com/lightningnetwork/lnd/blob/b0288d46773ac6d45e5dc4d5e6a80dd3034d0b9f/lnwire/msat.go#L13Moving on, would you agree to the idea that it might be better to develop an off-chain layer on top of Bitcoin using a hub and spoke model, before turning it into a more peer to peer model?
LN is not a 'offchain layer ontop of bitcoin'
firstly LN is its own network (N of LN =network)
secondly LN was buzzworded and concepted even before bitcoin became compatible with LN
thirdly LN is not limited to bitcoin
the whole calling it a layer and saying its ontop of is just word play to try making it sound like LN is a bitcoin feature purely to gather fame and attention for sponsorship
LN is its own cryptocurerncy network of pegged tokens of multiple coins.
the sponsorship word play is much the same as circle word played themselves as a bitcoin company for sponsorship before then moving away from bitcoin..