[gruez]

That doesn't answer my initial question, how is blockstream supposed to monetize lightning, or anything for that matter?

>The claim, as far as understand it, is that Blockstream supported this plan, anticipating its failure, while working on its own replacement technology, Liquid.

I took a quick skim of blockstream's materials on liquid, and it sounds like it's something totally different to lightning? They describe it as some sort of ripple-like network for transacting in tokens? eg.

>Liquid uses an approach to consensus called Strong Federations. A Strong Federation removes the need for costly Proof of Work mechanisms and replaces it with the collective actions of a group of mutually distrusting participants called functionaries.

[FreeTrade]

The claim is not that Blockstream intended to profit from Lightning. Rather they used the promise of Lightning to throttle Bitcoin, in order to profit from Liquid.

[kallewoof]

Nonsense. Liquid is directly dependent on Bitcoin's success.

And as has been stated before, Blockstream employees got a chunk of their pay check in bitcoin. Do you really think they'd try to "throttle" their own livelihood?

[gruez]

Okay, how are they profiting from liquid? Moreover, what's liquid's "moat"? What's stopping me from copying liquid's software (seems to be open source) and making a clone that charges 0% fees?