I'm not too familiar with Zenon tbh. It looks like a new L1?

I've spent quite a bit of time working on cross-chain in the past. I previously worked at Liquality working on Atomic Swaps between BTC <> ETH. I think there's a ton of challenges with doing things cross-chain. You run into issues like free-option problem. Much easier to build on only one chain. And DLCs can do almost all the things you need for Bitcoin when it comes to financial tools.

PTLCs are cool, and a great upgrade to lightning. They will enable DLCs to be routed over LN (although this involves significant capital lockups).

As for VC I think this question answers it: #207366