pull down to refresh
Are you saying that each operator runs their own federated statechain? If not, did I say something that requires you pointing out there are multiple validators/signers?
I don't mean to sound like I'm dissing Spark. They are offering a solution to a serious problem in lightning and I'm grateful for it. Afaict no one is dissing Spark. We are, or at least I am, expressing frustration with how the product is marketed (and if you check the receipts, the same folks have the same complaints about "self-custodial" Liquid swaps).
Why are we so frustrated? Because the self-custodial lightning problem isn't actually solved yet, and broadcasting that it is risks us never actually solving the problem.
Also, it tends to inflame things when Spark-aligned folks respond to these frustrations with non-sequitur virtues, albeit real ones.
i agree with that.
I just equally hate how many in here assume that the Lightning UX is great and perfected, and if you can't use it self-custodially you're dumb: "the problem is you", or even better when they say ""bitcoin education"" is needed, as if anybody had to learn TCP/IP or SMTP and have ""internet education"" to use consumer products like Gmail.
For sure. Critics ask Spark to broadcast the full picture while critics don't broadcast the inconvenient parts of their position either.
I'm fond of telling founders that murky problems beget murky solutions.[1] Spark is a murky solution to a murky problem. They aren't responsible for the problem. They didn't create it.
usually the context is that they haven't defined the problem they are trying to solve well enough. but it applies generally, to problems that are out of our control or aren't well understood, too. ↩
Flashnet
I know it's quasi-FUD, because I'm sure more operators will come online, but David's son is the founder/CEO of Flashnet.
Bitcoiners have a high bar. When we say something is off, it doesn't equate to condemnation. It just means something is off. In this case, Spark is getting very close to abusing bitcoin/lightning's halo and unless there's some acknowledgement of that, bitcoiners will expect it's just-the-tip of the iceberg.
I wouldn't call it pathetic. I'd say it makes sense considering how young the federation is. I pointed it out because you were using that list to imply buy-in/decentralization/trustlessness.
I'm interested in trying to figure out wtf is going on ... which is hard to do when the definition of "self-custody" is extended to encompass things like:
- ecash
- a tiny federation where you must trust one member ... with practically infeasible unilateral exit promises[1]
- bitcoin wrapping assets
context is me trying to implement recovery snapshots when receiving payments (customer and their mnemonic are offline ... yet I somehow need to auth as the customer to create a snapshot else lose ability to recover) ↩
There are 3 Spark operators currently:
Spark has been open source for a long time. Including the Operator source code.