Fedimint and cashu pretty much rely on lightning to be interoperable. This stack is insanely complicated

I like the idea of having something like cashu, but directly correlated to onchain BTC. If I’m understanding correctly, isn’t this what Ark is?

Yes, we still need it. Everything comes with it's own tradeoffs. https://image.nostr.build/722de23843011899dc4f249f242e90f704559eac55101c640aa6b786fca0e8e7.jpg