Spark feels like a middle ground between fully custodial stuff like Liquid and fully trustless layers like Lightning. The federation setup means there’s some risk if those coordinators act sketchy, but being able to pull your bitcoin back on chain yourself is a big deal. The catch is that exit locks your funds for weeks, so it’s more of a backup plan than something you wanna use every day for quick payments.

Then there’s the token layer with its freezing powers, which is kinda sketchy if you care about censorship resistance even if it doesn’t touch your base bitcoin. Overall, Spark might work for some niche cases, like moving small amounts inside a trusted group, but it’s not the fully trustless future Bitcoin needs. Just another tradeoff in the messy Layer 2 world worth watching but not something to bet on replacing Lightning anytime soon.