[BrendanEich]

We built on Bitcoin from 2016 onward, and shut it down in favor of BAT in 2017 fall. Fees in 2017 hit 90% for users doing small buys to goodwill-donate, confirmation times went to days, and we had no moneybags funding grants to users. Drive by maximalists told us to “use LN” or (when reminded it was not usable) “wait for LN”. That solved nothing then and solves nothing much even now.

Most of the 250K creators at https://batgrowth.com/ do not want any crypto, never mind bitcoin. Running an LN node looks like it will require licensing, and in any case LN is effectively custodial in tying up coin. Our model is to pay users, not tie up their coins keeping a few channels open to a relative handful of sites.

Bootstrapping in the face of Metcalfe’s Law is hard enough without obviously bad advice and then ill will from maximalists.