Thank you for describing so well the current LN problems.

I've been a bitcoin user for a long time and try to avoid lightning when I can. I'm onboarding people around me all the time and LN is too much of a headache (unless fully custodial, which I don't like).

My current go-to for onboarding is Liquid, but I explain the trade-offs and specify that it must never be your pension fund. The pension fund must be mainnet bitcoin.

Liquid works like bitcoin, offline address, no channel liquidity problems, but faster transaction confirmations, more private, cheaper fees, etc. With current lightning<->liquid exchanges, I can hold liquid bitcoin on a hardware wallet and easily pay any lightning invoice. For any amount that goes over my comfort level (for funds in a federation), it's back to mainnet bitcoin.

Cashu / ecash / fedimints feel like another great option. I'm very excited by the added privacy. If only used for spending and receiving smaller amounts, it feels perfect. For me, cashing out of a mint would be through a lightning->liquid exchange to my liquid wallet (or liquid hardware wallet).

However, I'm a HARD pass on covenants. If bitcoin has covenants that enable us to specify where money can be sent, it feels too much like enabling the State to come in and mandate some kind of KYC in there or whitelisted addresses, etc.

I prefer to keep the mainnet pure and do what I have to do on other layers. I'm glad to see your current focus is Fedimints. Looks promising and I'm very excited about that present/future.

My two sats.