Some initial thoughts on Spark (the new L2 from Lightspark).

What I like:

- very fast and getting faster

- backwards compatible with Lightning

- self-custodial without liquidity management

- Lightspark is making it really easy to build with

- They’re not doing a token or any other bs

Other things to note:

- not very private. Transactions are public

- 1/n trust assumption for operators running the spark entity

- they’re bringing stablecoins onto the L2

Overall I’m not super keen on stablecoins on Bitcoin, but it was probably bound to happen regardless. This seems like a good solution for that.

More importantly, I think that the trust assumptions are solid for a payments layer on Bitcoin. You’re trading off the trustlessness of something like LN for a trust-minimized solution that offers self-custody without having to worry about inbound liquidity and such. I think that’s a trade off worth making, since you likely won’t (and shouldn’t) keep much of your stack on the L2. Given how many people are already using custodial LN wallets, this feels like a step in the right direction.

I’ve spoken directly to some of the people involved in Spark, and it’s clear they’re trying to make it as easy as possible for people to build on this stack. So I’m excited to see what comes of it.