It's not a "ladder" to a consumer payments tech layer. That would imply you need to traverse it to get there, but you don't. Not everyone has to have and run a node, in any meaningful sense. As you correctly point out in the article, that scenario is problematic and not realistic.

0260378aef

bitcoin

Sorry! It’s just that you’re going to have to pay/ask permission to use Bitcoin

jarolrod

Yeah this was mainly an amusing way for me to examine the direction we're going in with regards to tooling for non-technical people. Obviously base layer will not be where most transactions occur, but the steps required for someone to run it still needs to be low (and it is that way right now with core having a gui). For example, If someone wanted to setup their own Fedimint server, they need a bitcoin backend. 

The ladder to the consumer tech layer can't be paywalled along the way :)