I'll try a more realistic one: how about you get $1000 salary once a month, and pay your normal bills with it? Bills will go from high amounts like your rent to daily small amounts for coffee. Then you indeed can't use the same funds several times. It becomes slightly better if you receive your salary every week. You probably don't want an open channel with your employer (I wouldn't want them to know my remaining balance), so you'll still need a third party.
This is more like a real scenario. A $ 1000 channel means that you have to pay the hub $30 per year.
If you make an average of 1 transaction per day, 360 per year, then you will get an average of $30/360 - 8 cents per transaction.
If there are 10 transactions every day, then 0.8 cents. But this is unlikely. After all, if we are considering the option with a single hub, then all your counterparties must be connected to this hub.
8 cents per transaction-this is already comparable to transactions in another blockchain. For example, take dash. There are instant payments that can be made for ~10 cents per transaction. And at the same time, you don't need any centralized hub, you don't need channels, you don't need a third party to replenish the channel. The question is, what will users prefer?
Is it unprofitable to keep an LN node? This means that there will be few nodes, and their number will not grow. What we have now.
There are SEVERAL entities which would benefit from a LN node even if their income from LN fees is tiny.
If we want to objectively assess the prospects for LN, we should not look at atypical cases. They don't make the weather.
We need to see how 90% of the standard participants will behave.
For example, how will 90% of customers use LN? How will 90% of sellers use LN?
What will be 90% of the LN network nodes? Is it profitable for these 90% to keep an LN node?
Fyookball isn't an "independent researcher", he's clearly a big blocker and probably a Bitcoin Cash supporter. That's ok for me but his postings (on his blog and here) shouldn't be considered neutral science.
Don't believe the math in the article, because the author is a big block proponent.
Funny.
Unfortunately for you, mathematics is a neutral science.