Ok it is nuanced I will grant you that, but I think our goal is that users can receive bitcoins without any more of a ceremony than having an address, and that money remains passively safe somehow, even if by employing a watchtower, as long as this watchtower can't steal (only fail).
This is the least people expect from payment systems.
However, operational/maintenance fees are acceptable, but losing all the funds wholesale on a such short timeout is just not going to fly.
My baseline is Phoenix LN wallet where presumably the worst that could happen is they close the channel and I pay high fees, or they try to steal and a non custodial watchtower can bail me out.
If Ark is a step forward (no need for opening channels) I hope there are no steps backwards on the other end.
Operators run a business, it would be ill advised for them to run away with user funds even if users leave their outputs to expire. Of course there are plenty of mitigations for this but it's not a dealbreaker.
Cashu mints run a business too, but reputation usually begets KYC, and dark markets beget rug pulls.
The best argument I read so far is that some ASPs could offer longer expiration periods with higher transaction fees, and users can use that for long term savings.
