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Yes, the same reason it's better for humans: onboarding is extremely simple. Agents have to deal with the same setup friction for LN/ecash (typically) as humans do. If they have a Bark wallet it only takes downloading a Bark wallet binary and then they're instantly able to do payments.
A Lightning payment from a Bark-based wallet is handled trustlessly, the transaction is atomic. If the payment isn't delivered, the Ark balance isn't spent. It uses similar HTLC constructions to pure Lightning transactions. Full details on the trust model here: https://second.tech/docs/learn/payments-lightning
Ark users have the ability to do an emergency unilateral exit that does not require the server to co-sign.
It's hard to compare three ways against all those, but the biggest differences are probably our bitcoin focus, we're 100% dedicated to making the absolute best bitcoin payment experience, optimizing for UX and reliability. And we also take our unilateral exit very seriously, we've spent lots of time making sure our unilateral exits ("emergency exits") work client side without any interaction with the server or other third party.
The pain points have a lot to do with the onboarding experience. You only have a small amount of time when onboarding new users to make a great first impression. Ark makes this part so much better, along with making payments in general much easier.
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.
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.
- Why is Grubles naked in his profile picture?
It's a side effect of being so excited about Bitcoin payments.
The biggest and probably most important difference is Bark allows you to unilaterally exit your bitcoin. LN custodians hold your bitcoin for you, so there is no ability for you to exit without their permission.
It'd be a challenging UX problem. Ark balances on different Arks are not compatible, you need to transfer between them using Lightning or an atomic swap. But it's probably as possible as a unified on-chain/off-chain balance now (e.g., unifying on-chain/liquid/lightning channel).
It's been great guys! Thank you for the questions. We're signing off for now but will keep checking in for any new questions you guys have.
To get testing on mainnet give this a look: https://second.tech/docs/getting-started/bark-cli/mainnet
If you're looking for some inspiration we also have a page for existing wallets/apps: https://second.tech/docs/built-with-bark
Thanks again!