Really good read! I originally thought of Fedimint as a layer 3 since it builds on top on layer 2s (most notably lightning) to achieve seamless interoperability. I now think of it as a layer 1. Each federation is its own base layer which takes all of the best parts of shitcoins (low fees, great privacy, transaction speed & scaling, easy modification of base layer protocol, etc...) but pegs to Bitcoin and leverages its decentralization - the key component missing from all shitcoins.