Re Lightspark/UMA, a thing that some people don't seem to quite get is that it isn't really about KYC itself. Rather, it is about the standardisation of it on top of a pre-existing open protocol.
What if UMA become predominant over vanilla LNURL? How long 'till it kills it, like Google killed XMPP?
That's how you will a decentralised network, as brilliantly articulated [here](
https://ploum.net/2023-06-23-how-to-kill-decentralised-networks.html).
There's a clear path in which "compliant" extensions of open protocols become so widely adopted by the public that you either comply, or be exiled to the confines of cyberspace. What is happening now to LNURL will come to Lightning itself.
The openness of the protocols we use & love means there is no way to prevent States and Corporations to implement their own controlled versions of it. The only hill we can really fight on is acceptance and awareness. And I think the earlier we fight back, the better our chances.
As Eric Hugues [wrote](
https://nakamotoinstitute.org/cypherpunk-manifesto/): "We cannot expect governments, corporations, or other large, faceless organizations to grant us privacy out of their beneficence. It is to their advantage to speak of us, and we should expect that they will speak."
