I would not call it optional. Is a must if you expect to receive sats from SN. Is not necessary to "buy something" with those sats. You can simply swap them out (using any of those multiple swap services or simply send some sats to any of your LN wallets, as a buffer cache.

I am still surprised to see that people do not use multiple LN wallets and are stuck with just one... some of them even ONLY with SN account LOL.