I recommended you a few times in the past not to overhype the privacy state of Lightning. I suggest you align your documentation with this: https://lightningprivacy.com/en/introduction
Discussion
i.e., "there are certain theoretical ways to break privacy on Lightning".
I agree. And I strongly doubt any of these would be easy to pull off, and I really doubt anyone is attempting to pull them off.
But it's not fair to compare this situation with a user being married to one HTTP endpoint, which they have to use to do ANYTHING, and that HTTP endpoint being controlled by just one company -- and a company, at that, with a speciality in "compliance"?
1. It's not theoretical. Lightning is already being surveilled, don't be naive.
2. It's our job to allow users to switch LSPs and sub-networks at their will.
I don't subscribe to the FUD around Spark. I think it's a cool tech that will only get better and more private. And if not, the market will reject it and use something better.
There may be surveillance attempts on Lightning, but I doubt they are having much success. And again, how can you possibly compare that "possibility" -- to the fact that, for example, the government of Israel can send David Marcus a list of IP addresses and say "give us all the Spark transactions associated with these IP addresses"??
They can send it to you as well and to any Lightning node as a matter of fact. There's a reason Phoenix and WoS pulled out of the US. Now they are back - but nothing has changed from a tech standpoint.
Sure, those of us who are incentivized to do marketing for centralized, fully-surveilled, non-public solutions can continue to do that marketing.
Those of us who believe in freedom technology can also continue to make a fuss, especially when an app like Blitz, which was at one point associated with freedom technology, suddenly switches to sharing all of their user's transaction data with LightSpark.
Believe me, a lot of other Lightning participants are horrified, but a lot of them need to keep quiet because inevitably they will be looking for VC funding from the same funds which (unfortunately) are giving Breez money to market David Marcus' API.
I've been a Bitcoiner since 2012, don't need VC funding, so it's my role to explain to the community the danger of what you are marketing.
I just think you're on the wrong track. I know we're a good actor and we help Spark be more private. We already do so. We're also pushing other sub-networks and the native Lightning tech itself.
"we help Spark be more private"
A good actor would immediately recognize that LightSpark is building a closed, permissioned system, which allows them full surveillance, and would refuse to work with LightSpark until they showed a commitment to decentralization, privacy, and respect for the founding principles of Lightning and Bitcoin.
That's your blind spot, not mine. I think they are committed to an open network. They already executed on their commitment. They open sourced the SE/SO. They communicated a public roadmap wrt to privacy. I think you're completely misjudging because? You're not doing that with Arkade, you're not doing that with Phoenix, for some reason you're targeting David Marcus. I judge them based on their actions.
I would also encourage anyone following this thread to ask around at respected companies in Lightning like Lightning Labs, Blockstream, Phoenix, or others, and ask them about their opinion of using proprietary APIs like Breez and Spark, compared to using the Lightning Network as it was designed. You might find they say some interesting things in private, that they're too polite to say publicly.