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It's probably strictly better. Self-custodial clients need to get super complex for both devs and users to support all the P2P connections. There's multiple channels, lots of liquidity to worry about. It's like the difference between running your own email server and relying on Proton Mail. Most people will prefer Proton.
The biggest trade-off for an Ark user is probably that unilateral exits will usually cost more to execute. With Lightning it's two on-chain txs per channel, but with Ark it's going to be a few times that on average.
And both have a liveness requirement, Lightning users need to be able to detect combat malicious channel closes.
I definitely see how the liveness requirement of Ark is less intense than the liveness requirement of lightning. It feels like a big improvement there.
But I was thinking about it like this: with lightning, I can create a channel with any peer willing to make a channel with me. And the odds are there will be somebody who is willing to do that. So I can get access into the wider lightning network.
With a client-server relationship like Ark, I could get shut out if the Ark Service Provider doesn't want to serve me. For instance, imagine that I live in Iran and bark doesn't want to get in trouble, so they might potentially geoblock ip addresses from Iran. It seems like the client-server nature of Ark makes it a little less open than lightning.
Yes, lightning is awesome and the protocol is very decentralized.
However, we see that most end-users rely on a lightning service provider (LSP) to use it. In some way lightning is growing into a hub and spoke model. Even many hobbyists that run a lightning node for fun are buying channels from such an LSP.
This risk of geo-blocking for an Ark Server and LSP is quite similar. We need moreArk Servers. But at some point we need more LSPs
PS: All code is public and anyone can run their own Ark Server.
Ark users have the ability to do an emergency unilateral exit that does not require the server to co-sign.
From a user perspective, how do you think about the difference between a client-server protocol like Ark and something that is more peer to peer like lightning? I'm primarily interested in the trade-offs for a user (eg, I don't have to worry about liveness, but I don't have as strong control over my utxos)?