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Here are the reasons I find spark ugly:
- seems like a closed/walled system
- deceitful marketing
- lack of privacy
- complexity may hide trade-offs
- the company behind it feels very slick
Many of these also apply to Ark and Liquid. And yet I don't feel that Ark and Liquid are as ugly. I'm not sure why that is (perhaps it is more difficult for the ASP to steal your sats than it is for the Spark operator?)
Further, when I think of lightning wallets like Lexe and Phoenix, where I have one channel with a central LSP that can see all my payments and that is the only partner the wallet will allow me to make a channel with, I struggle to articulate what is much prettier. Even though I use and recommend those wallets somewhat often.
Perhaps Zeus is the king of wallets?
I'd suggest that the complexity argument technically goes for Bitcoin L1 and therefore everything that interacts with it, including and especially LN. I'm not so sure that it is possible to get rid of complexity, since these are basically protocol requirements inherited from L1 and anything that attempts to address ease-of-use would automate complexity away.
If today I had to choose a production wallet on my phone, without running any server, it would be Zeus. But this is a continuity thing vs Blixt[1] only, because reviewing Zeus is not pleasurable, at all.
However, you don't want to be me and have my requirements. Also there are a million features that I wouldn't use and be looking to locally fork out on my clone. I was working on phase 2 of my lnpub zero-to-hero testing, but that needs a server and there is no way in hell that I am running an always-on LND for production monies right now; it's a risk that I cannot afford. Sats are my actual money, I don't have a lot left, and I actually need those sats to buy food and roof.
A Dutch thing I learned came to mind reading this. Loosely translated:
even when a monkey wears a golden ring
it is and remains an ugly thing