+So why Lightning? Why are we here? What do we want to build with Lightning? Do we want to reach Bitcoin promises of instant transaction, scaling to the masses, these types of hopes? Do we want to enable fancy financial contracts? Do we want to build streams of microtransactions? It is not really clear. When you are reading the Lightning white paper people have different views on how you can use Lightning and what you can use Lightning for? Why should you work on Lightning if you are a young developer? It is one of the most wide and unchartered territories. There are so many things to do, so many things to build, it is really exciting. There are still a lot of unknowns. We are building this network of pipes but we don’t know yet the how of the pipes. We don’t know what they will be used for, we don’t know where they will be used and by who. There is a lot of uncertainty. Right now it is single funded channels, really simple to understand. Tomorrow there are things like channel factories, multiparty channels… maybe splicing and a coinjoin transaction will open a set of channels. Maybe something like OP_SECUREBAG to do Lightning… There are a lot of efforts. So what are we going to send through these pipes? Are we going to send only HTLC or more complex stuff like DLC or a combination of DLC, conditional payments. If you follow [Lightning-dev](https://gnusha.org/url/https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/lightning-dev/) there is an awesome ongoing conversation on payment points and what you can build thanks to that. Where? Are we going to deploy Lightning on the internet? There are a lot of ideas on how to use Lightning to fund mesh nets and this kind of stuff. Or it could be a device and you are going to pay for what you consume from a stream. Maybe hardware security modules if you are an exchange, you are going to deploy Lightning on some architecture without a broadband connection. Who are going to use our stuff? I think that it is the biggest question to ask. You don’t have the same bandwidth if you live in New York or you live in South Africa or you live in Germany. People have different viewpoints on this, they have different resources. A basic consumer is not going to use Lightning the way a merchant is going to use Lightning, Lightning liquidity providers are going to set infrastructures. There are a lot of open questions. Who? What? How? When? We can look at the history of software engineering and how it solves these issues. I believe in the UNIX philosophy of doing something similar, doing something modular and combine the building blocks.