Imagine where we would be if 2016 we just went with ecash (backed by on-⛓️)instead of 8+ years of skilled dev resources working on LN. 🤷

Probably:

Bittorent tracker-like handful of major mints dominating the scene, but fast reliable private payments and super easy UX.

The mints would have invented a form of payment channels/ LN anyway, to efficiently settle balances between them.