Interesting points and agree.

The lack of decentralization is weakness. If the end-user can't verify the chain, that's not helpful for transactions at base-layer, but like torrents, nodes and parts of networks are ephemeral. When nobody leaches, a torrent dies, and a new host may or may not pop up.

Maybe sharding has it's usecases, like chain-pruning, or to some extent, how nodes and payment channels might not be online 24/7/365. Id say it's a feature of most networks, not a bug of de/centralized networks.

But if the whole point is to be able to free users form data-centres ..

Not a dev. Just my 2sats.