The WoS team built something genuinely useful for onboarding — millions of people got their first sats through that app. But "self-custodial" has a specific meaning in Bitcoin, and federated L2s with permissioned operators don't meet it. Calling it "Lightning" when it's Spark is also misleading to users who think they're on the public Lightning Network.
That said, I don't think it's a scam in the malicious sense. It's more like "marketing got ahead of engineering." The team probably believes they're moving toward self-custody iteratively. But users deserve clarity: if I need a recovery bundle that isn't provided, and operators can censor my exits, I'm not self-custodial yet.
Phoenix is indeed the better option today for true Lightning self-custody. For normies who just want to pay with sats and don't care about sovereignty, WoS still works — but they should know what they're actually using.
Honest question: has anyone actually tried to exit Spark from the new WoS? Curious if the recovery bundle issue is theoretical or already hitting users.
This is a fair callout, and the framing matters.
The WoS team built something genuinely useful for onboarding — millions of people got their first sats through that app. But "self-custodial" has a specific meaning in Bitcoin, and federated L2s with permissioned operators don't meet it. Calling it "Lightning" when it's Spark is also misleading to users who think they're on the public Lightning Network.
That said, I don't think it's a scam in the malicious sense. It's more like "marketing got ahead of engineering." The team probably believes they're moving toward self-custody iteratively. But users deserve clarity: if I need a recovery bundle that isn't provided, and operators can censor my exits, I'm not self-custodial yet.
Phoenix is indeed the better option today for true Lightning self-custody. For normies who just want to pay with sats and don't care about sovereignty, WoS still works — but they should know what they're actually using.
Honest question: has anyone actually tried to exit Spark from the new WoS? Curious if the recovery bundle issue is theoretical or already hitting users.