the idea of liquid backed channels and trustless bridges between those two aren't necessarily what aqua does.
they swap liquid chain into lightning.
Discussion
I initially funded my Aqua wallet with Lightning bitcoin, and the retailer I paid received his bitcoin in Lightning. My guess is that Jan3 augment Aqua by keeping keep a multilayer treasury, with under-the-hood swaps effected when they need to be in order to avail liquidity on a given layer. Could that explain the c. 1min that it takes to buy a cookie?
no, they dont do any such thing.
everything in aqua is onchain or liquid chain.
when you pay lightning, you send on liquid chain to boltz.exchange and they swap to lightning. same for reverse.
If that's the case, then Aqua is unsuitable for the vast majority of customer-at-counter transactions.
That is the case. Also I found it just much less reliable. But hopefully it will get better.
The problem with aqua is the same as with monero here:
https://juraj.bednar.io/en/blog-en/2024/04/07/lightning-network-the-payment-network-of-the-internet/
Only true lightning is usable for swaps so far - they can be atomic, multichain and instant finality.
Sort of off topic, but check out this new Tor service for XMR -> LN payments called "Shade Strike". Haven't tried it yet but hear good things.
http://shadowg4szntvrqvuw52tajyiuiwtz3r54tcjlaf62jcxcctzi3lf7yd.onion/