This point is so interesting! I'd never considered it in this way, but it makes sense, and is consistent w/ everything I know about reality and how systems change. Whatever btc is or becomes will be tied with a million tiny threads into what exists now. These LN operators can make legally-binding contracts, and that is useful in certain ways, so of course they do, and in this fashion the system morphs into something even more complex and layered, with its own virtues and vulnerabilities.

It has never been the case, in anything I'm aware of, where the existing thing, no matter how corrupt, just got shit-canned, and you started fresh. Not after the fall of Rome, not after the nuking of Japan. The new is built on the rotting flesh of the old. It's so hard to think clearly about this, and yet it's right there, in the open, dominating everything.