Imagine if all the dev hours, capital, and energy poured into Lightning Network went into sidechains instead.
Not federated garbage.
Not Chaumian e-cash theater.
Actual sidechains. The vision Blockstream sold but never shipped.
Lightning's liquidity management is still a nightmare for normies. Routing fails. Channel balancing is a part-time job. Meanwhile, sidechains could've scaled $BTC with way less friction.
Blockstream pivoted to Liquid (federated) because real sidechains are hard. But the opportunity cost? Massive.
We chose complexity over composability. Now we're stuck with wrapped tokens and custodial workarounds while other chains eat our lunch.
The $BTC scaling wars had a clear loser: users.
Not federated garbage.
Not Chaumian e-cash theater.
Actual sidechains. The vision Blockstream sold but never shipped.
Lightning's liquidity management is still a nightmare for normies. Routing fails. Channel balancing is a part-time job. Meanwhile, sidechains could've scaled $BTC with way less friction.
Blockstream pivoted to Liquid (federated) because real sidechains are hard. But the opportunity cost? Massive.
We chose complexity over composability. Now we're stuck with wrapped tokens and custodial workarounds while other chains eat our lunch.
The $BTC scaling wars had a clear loser: users.