Lightning in theory would allow for fast & cheap transactions, so BTC could really be used for payments instead of the "asset" it has become. Has been discussed for years with nothing to show. I remain skeptical. But if it works well, it could be a catalyst for mainstream adoption and increased price support.
>Has been discussed for years with nothing to show
Yes, it's literally an overnight success. I think they started coding this last night, and it's in beta today /s
On a more serious note, a lot of work has firstly gone into making sure all the different implementations work well with each other, aka the standardization problem. That's a big win in and of itself.
The routing problem isn't trivial either. Lightning currently uses an 'onion-like' routing scheme where, similar to TOR, the nodes have a very limited information on the origin and destination addresses. This is great news for privacy.
The lightning network has been running on the testnet successfully for many months now, and some early adopter merchants even accepted testnet coins for small purchases. Over a 1000 lightning nodes are currently running.
