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0 sats \ 2 replies \ @d01abcb3eb 30 Nov \ parent \ on: Lightning Self-Custody Works: Why Mobile Nodes Are the Future of Bitcoin lightning
Ark is not custodial. It is surveilling, but not custodial. At least not more custodial than lightning - where your funds can be lost as well if you don't check in periodically to challenge fraudulent force closures.
I haven't read the Voltage shill, but am generally of the opinion that running your own lightning node is a good idea. Not only for privacy, but because I believe that we should actively promote as much decentralization as possible. CLINK looks great, but so does self-sovereign lightning network participation. People shitting on any side of the spectrum just do so to promote their own agenda.
I had Blixt in my iPhone between ~700000 and ~900000, and thought it was great. Connected to my own always-on node however, so didn't need to worry about fraudulent force closures. I only got rid of it because the level of use didn't motivate the amount of funds locked up in a channel.
Ark is not custodial
It is "Trustodial", in most of the use-cases they market it toward. It can be used with Lightning-level security, but the cost of doing so is the same and therefore doesn't solve those other use-cases they market towards. It's DeFi-brained crap.
if you don't check in periodically
This is true of both, interactivity is an inherent requirement of anything above the chain as there's coordination involved. Bitcoin is unique with its lack of interactivity requirement, that goes out the door once you coordinate over the top of it.
shitting on any side of the spectrum
Shitting on Ark is not shitting on solutions that leverage trust and centralization, its recognizing those options have always existed, and that only scammers would re-brand as an L2 to hide it.
level of use didn't motivate the amount of funds locked up in a channel.
Key insight, Lightning needs velocity, currently most people incur costs just to tinker with it... it needs to unlock revenue streams. Mobile nodes that don't work while you sleep and can't be shared are antithetical to velocity.
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I can empathize with your frustration, you being a developer of a competing solution.
A leaf lightning node doesn't really need velocity. Private channels can't even have velocity as no routing is allowed. My reasoning leading to the closure of my channel was rather specific to having that channel to my own node, thus being able to use all the allocated funds differently - while retaining a non-custodial mobile wallet using e.g. LNbits (although perhaps without plausible deniability of that wallet). Stating that end-users ought not run their own nodes is always just a sales pitch for something else - usually something worse.
My claims of Ark not being custodial came from the Ark paper, which clearly describes the ability to exit without the need of cooperation. This is basically what non-custodial means. Having read that paper, I'd definitely judge that the protocol described there is an L2 as well.
The paper was written by people behind Arkade. You seem to imply that Ark implementations do something else, which makes them "Trustodial" as a consequence. I'd be interested in some pointers to sources supporting this, as it'd be a peculiar divergence between theory and practice - a bit akin to claiming that lightning implementations do not support channels closures without trusting the channel peer.
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