THE FEATURE Lightning Has a Problem: People Are Already Using It Fake money is boring. At least, that's the contention of many micropayment enthusiasts, whose impatience for the Lightning Network has led to an influx of real bitcoin being transacted over the network, even though developers caution people against doing so since it's still in the testing phase. "The testnet just doesn't have the same adrenaline rush," representatives of VPN service TorGuard told CoinDesk, after announcing it would be accepting Lightning payments. And they're not the only ones – Blockstream launched a Lightning-only merchandise store using its own Lightning implementation, c-lightning, and a Lightning main net explorer suggests more than $33,000 in bitcoin has been transacted via Lightning Networks. The excitement is not hard to explain – the off-chain technology promises near-instant transaction speeds with vastly reduced fees – and many enthusiasts believe using the network on the bitcoin mainnet, as opposed to on the testnet, will speed up the time it takes to get the Lightning Network ready for prime time. "I think it's time for [Lightning Network] to go live, even if still buggy. But this is the best way to harden it," one Twitter user wrote. Yet using the network while it's still in development has not only led to confusion as to its readiness, but it's also caused several people to lose real bitcoin funds. Because of that, Blockstream's decision has been criticized, and others have called opening Lightning channels with hundreds and thousands of dollars of bitcoin "crazy." In spite of persistent warnings, though, mainnet implementations of Lightning already have over 205 nodes and 548 channels, at press time, with no sign of stalling. Yet, what this momentum is slowing, according to developers, is the rate at which Lightning will be safe to use on the bitcoin mainnet.... | 
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