LNURL-pay was first developed for commerce/B2C.

Years later Lightning Address came along and became a success, because it allowed for an easy to write & read handle.

Soon even custodial wallets started using Lightning Address and this later lead to widespread usage on nostr.

It's a succession of events that lead to the current situation.

So as it stands now, non-custodial LN wallets are losing on walkover to custodial wallets, where you have easy access to a Lightning Address.

My Lightning Box solution tries its best to work within this framework that has been developed and gives a sound alternative to using a 100% custodial and trusted Lightning Address solution.

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Other technologies such as BOLT12, especially with "async payments", could help steer people away from Lightning address.

But it cannot fully replace it, because the primary value proposition of Lightning Address is an easy to read and write handle, which BOLT12 doesn't have.

It's possible we can do some neat "spacechain DNS with BOLT12/BOLT11 AMP" and whatnot, so I'm open to possible ideas.