Bitcoin was built to allow permissionless transactions and true self custody but the network’s actual use case spectrum is much broader. Lightning adds another layer of flexibility and complexity and that means the architecture is capable of both purist noncustodial flows and pragmatic mixed custody models.
In any distributed system the ideal from a security and sovereignty standpoint will not always be the optimal from a cost or convenience standpoint. That is why the analogy to electricity bills and supermarket transactions is apt. Systems evolve to aggregate micro actions into larger settlements because that is economically efficient. Lightning may technically allow streaming sats for every minuscule interaction but that does not mean the economic equilibrium will favor it.
What is also important here is the social cost of purity enforcement. When the constraint becomes ideological rather than functional the system loses flexibility and fails to meet the preferences of different participants. If Lightning adoption is pushed through strict noncustodial demands in low value contexts it will slow down adoption rather than accelerate it. The point is to make the technology accessible and useful in ways that match the context of the interaction.
Bitcoin was built to allow permissionless transactions and true self custody but the network’s actual use case spectrum is much broader. Lightning adds another layer of flexibility and complexity and that means the architecture is capable of both purist noncustodial flows and pragmatic mixed custody models.
In any distributed system the ideal from a security and sovereignty standpoint will not always be the optimal from a cost or convenience standpoint. That is why the analogy to electricity bills and supermarket transactions is apt. Systems evolve to aggregate micro actions into larger settlements because that is economically efficient. Lightning may technically allow streaming sats for every minuscule interaction but that does not mean the economic equilibrium will favor it.
What is also important here is the social cost of purity enforcement. When the constraint becomes ideological rather than functional the system loses flexibility and fails to meet the preferences of different participants. If Lightning adoption is pushed through strict noncustodial demands in low value contexts it will slow down adoption rather than accelerate it. The point is to make the technology accessible and useful in ways that match the context of the interaction.