For Ark users, as long as they refresh their newly received Ark BTC and continue to refresh once a month thereafter, they are almost entirely free from counterparty risk. The downside is that each refresh requires waiting for at least one Bitcoin block confirmation.
For native Lightning Network users, the BTC they receive over LN is almost immediately free from counterparty risk. The downside is that they must open and manage their own Lightning channels and maintain sufficient inbound capacity.
This is a cost trade-off between opening and managing Lightning channels and waiting for a refresh, followed by monthly refreshes.
For newly received Ark BTC, the user also faces the risk that the previous owner and the Ark service provider could collude to double spend it, which is similar to Spark BTC. The user can refresh the received Ark BTC to eliminate this counterparty risk, which Spark cannot do.
After refreshing, the counterparty risk for the Ark BTC is: *“if the user stays offline for too long (approximately one month) and their VTXO expires, the service provider may be able to take control of it.”*
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