This is a case where group psychology >more relevant than> tech.

The important thing about Lightning is the emotions behind it. Everyone is a bagholder. They cannot admit they were so, so wrong. They squirm away from accountability -- prolonging our collective misery.

Everyone has a brainwashed liberal SJW friend, and a nutty aunt/uncle who is the idiot flavor of MAGA. These people are lost causes. It is all wishful thinking, confirmation bias, post hoc "rationalization" -- they are basically impervious to argument.

ARK is basically the refuge for smart LN people. They are smart, so they realize that Lightning doesn't work. Much like Burak -- the inventor of ARK -- said: "I’ve always been a big critic of Lightning. I had severe objections, right? ..from inbound liquidity, to inbound receiving interactivity … I wanted [with ARK] to address the inbound liquidity problem, but I really couldn’t find a cure for it. … I fail to see Lightning scaling." -- one of my many quotes here https://www.truthcoin.info/blog/ln-blackpill/

Unfortunately, ARK still inherits two large problems from LN:

• its txn fee is not passed down to the L1 miners, setting the stage for eventual conflict (or a vertical integration that renders the cryptography pointless)
• liquidity (although, it is much improved and now transformed in a complex fashion)

I think the complexity of ARK gives it an allure. But this will ultimately turn out to be nerdsniping. (LN itself followed the same pattern.)