If we work to technologically facilitate extremely broad access to and interest in sovereignty, via keys and nodes, we can entrench a broad, distributed collection of opposing interests that makes subverting the monetary properties untenable. If we fail to technologically provide for highly distributed, direct interests in the happenings on L1, then most people will inevitably lose access to those monetary properties, as they did with gold. Scaling isn’t about increasing capacity to help commerce: it’s actually increasing defense.

For bitcoin to succeed, we need to scale sovereign usage. Not just as an egalitarian dream, not to help commerce, but in mutual defense. Every user subservient to a custodian makes no meaningful impact on preserving the monetary properties. But every user at least monitoring the chain - completely independently, out of their own self interest, and making economic decisions based on their findings - serves as another guardian of the monetary properties, which benefits everyone. If this becomes entrenched, trying to subvert the system is untenable. A Japanese Admiral is famously attributed the quote: “You cannot invade the mainland United States. There would be a rifle behind every blade of grass”, and though it is likely apocryphal, the sentiment is undeniable - and makes particular sense in bitcoin.