The idea of LN is to reduce the demand for on chain transactions. If this happens, transaction fees will go down and opening a channel will not cost $50.
Fundamentally, Bitcoin needs some form of off-chain transaction. It is just not feasible to record every transaction in a permanent public ledger (let alone one that needs to be synced quickly enough to allow for ~10 minute block times)
> If this happens, transaction fees will go down and opening a channel will not cost $50
Bitcoin can process about ~3.5 tx's a second. The global population is about 7.6B. 1MB blocks are not sufficient..
Edit: For the record I think the obvious solution is both on and off chain scaling. Why it's even a debate I'm not really sure. I blame the illuminati.
