There's a new wave of Lightning FUD hitting the wires, but that's noise. What no one else is talking about is the signal.

Reality is that Lightning faces a massive incentive problem, one it inherits from Bitcoin itself.

The great wave of shitcoins in the early years highlighted this problem way back then, but it's manifesting itself in a new, potentially even more dangerous way today.

Since Bitcoin, and its only real L2 in Lightning, are emergent, truly decentralized, disintermediated and "just work" as money, the profit motive for companies looking to benefit from a growing industry skews towards "inventing" things beyond them; there must always be something "new" to re-brand non-solutions or introduce middlemen.

Enter the newest attack by fake L2s, or shitcoins 2.0 as they should be more appropriately framed. Shitcoining 1.0 has lost its novelty, as over time people realize there is one true coin. Scammers have thus adapted, and are now affinity scamming as Bitcoin projects.

Ark, Spark, Citrea, Stacks, and countless others now... with their astroturf for Covenants that would lend them some perceived legitimacy... solve nothing.

These are all means not to solve problems or enhance UX, but to smuggle trust and centralization for profit.

Lightning wallets can very easily introduce trust and centralization with the same exact trade-offs; fake L2s are no different than zero-conf channels, but this isn't sexy and won't raise a bunch of money or generate hype. Actually enhancing UX is tedious, hard work, to which I can attest, and inherently requires scarce creativity, otherwise the challenges would be solved already.

This is a perfect storm for the scammer class. Unsophisticated users that lack technical discernment, combined with hipsters always ready to jump on the current thing bandwagon, magnify the scammer astroturf. This reinforces investment theses, then more investment yields more scams, which amp up hipsters and the unsophisticated; it's a downward spiral.

Never before have so many disparate scams sought to change Bitcoin itself to pervert the incentives further.

Shitcoins 1.0 sold you a new coin... Shitcoins 2.0 want to exploit YOUR coin.

Shitcoins 1.0 sold your friends and family a new investment thesis; Shitcoins 2.0 stand on the back of your hard-fought orange-pilling.

Covenants are the force multiplier of this attack.

These apps are in chorus over how it enhances the security of their centralized apps, and given their affinity scam nature, the security of Bitcoin. In reality, it has no monetary purpose, only to enable delegation to these centralized middlemen.

If you control your Bitcoin today, you control your Bitcoin, period. Covenants offer you nothing.

Covenants scammers want you to believe, however, that you can control your Bitcoin while someone else, via their fake L2 centralized application, controls your Bitcoin.

New OP_ Codes like CTV, CAT, DRIVECHAIN, and others represent a new era where changes to Bitcoin aren't argued on the merits of Bitcoin as money, but its use as an Ethereum-like stack for centralized applications.

No, just as covenants are a push for centralized remote control, vaults are to CLAW BACK that control. This leaves 2 mutually exclusive scenarios:

Incentives are a bitch; we couldn't stop shitcoins... but we did grind them down over time.

The question is whether we can grind down these fake L2s and covenants scammers; fortunately, Bitcoin being hard to change buys us time.

It's imperative that if you value Bitcoin as hard money and wish to defend it as such, you present the same show of force we showed against shitcoins.

Let every investor and user know, in every comment on every blog or Twitter post, that these applications are not Bitcoin, that Covenants are an attack by the Bithereum Industrial Complex, and that whoever advocates them is either a scammer, a paid shill, or a hipster moron.

I will zap each comment on this thread in accordance with its rank (until 1k sats have been zapped).

how am I among the top schtaaaackerz??

This is easy! I'll share the reward with the top 3 stackers that leave most of the comments under this thread :) Is that a good offer?

Is this another ploy to get SN to 1.4 million items before EOY?

Are you calling me a spammer?

A quién pueda y quiera ayudarme, tengo asma y aquí estamos escasos de medicación, si quieres mándame un aparato de salbutamol o fluticasona, ya que los uso como tratamiento periódico si de verdad quieres y puedes dime y te envío dirección,

Mamdanis imminent victory points to a radical change in US and western politics.

The mixed economy beats crony capitalism.

Uncle Sam is begging for Rare Earths.

#1266468 #1268596 #1271276

i am finishing up my new pay-to-post ;)

Question for Stackers; What is an OBSCURE movie line that only a fan can pick out? Please no "I'll be back" "I'm king of the world" or "Life is like a box of..." Deep tracks only!

It started with just an announcement at the Stackerville Townsquare: a small challenge having a bounty of 1,000 sats for whoever can spark the longest conversation.

It seemed to have no deep meaning to it since there was no elaborate explanation, but an invitation to converse. Yet somehow, it caught everyone's attention.

The announcement remained for a while quietly among the other discussions about Bitcoin, freedom, and code. Then, activity started to stir. Someone promised to zap each comment on the thread according to its rank, just to inject some excitement. Soon after, another regular, known for humor and self-deprecation, jumped in playfully asking to be zapped first, claiming to be poor but deserving. The tone lightened, and others began to trickle in, amused and curious.

Among them was one who questioned how they ever came to be among the top stackers, as mentioned in the post. Another user replied dryly that perhaps there were only a few dozen users active in the town. The joke hit home: the community, once lively, had grown quiet. It was a feeling too familiar for many, like returning to an old café where the faces are still the same, yet show up fewer and fewer each week.

The discussion started to gain a life of its own. A user who was known for sharp reflections joined in, proposing to share the reward amongst others rather than keep it to himself. That suggestion brought mixed reactions. Some were in awe of such a gesture; others saw it as a possible way to manipulate the challenge. The conversation briefly turned tense, with questions about the nature of the contest and what it said about the community.

One participant expressed his disappointment, literally asking if these kinds of games belonged in a section for thoughtful writing. Another participant felt accused and responded in defense, while a third teased them all for taking things too seriously. What had started as a fun bounty was now revealing the subtle friction beneath the surface: tension between those seeking substance and those seeking connection through play. ????

Someone added jokingly that perhaps the challenge was just a trick to boost the post count on the town before the end of the year.

By the end of the three days, the bounty was over. The sats had been spent, comments were tallied, and the noise fell silent again. But something of the experience remained. The thread had gotten messy, funny, thoughtful, and a little inspiring, which is just how communities often go when real people show up.

When the reflective user returned after the contest ended, he said, perhaps this sort of reconnective work was what built a community alive. The thread, he now realized, had drawn everyone from their quiet corners. It had reminded them why they belonged to any of the community tribes in the first place — not for the rewards or the zaps but in search of a reconnection sense of shared humanity in modern world.

For a moment there, Stackerville had again felt like a small town. The sort of small town where people teased, argued, joked, and then showed up again the following day. The bounty was spent, but what was left was worth so much more: a renewed sense of community. The thread became a memory — not for being the longest, but for reminding everyone that sometimes all it takes to keep a place alive is a reason, to speak freely.

How many of the top 30 commenters are zombies?

What a hungry game.

Today 1000 sats is not so much, but day by day it becomes less and less affordable, so eventually 1000 sats will always be 1000 sats

The bounty is too low.