1.  Business is not evil.  And the tradeoffs for this network are tweaked and different than the base layer by design.  No one has to use it.

2.   I see a lot of black and white thinking in these comments which will lead us in circles.  We HAVE to choose which compromises we are willing to use on various layers.  And I agree this one needs to be explored for sure.   I am grateful that we can start having this conversation.

3.  Elements and Liquid are FOSS.  Anyone can fork it, and change the incentives as they wish.  I imagine Blockstream would love to see this, and would likely want to work with the other implementations to allow for interoperabvility between the forks.

Finally... The only way I see for us to build good software on top of bitcoin is to choose the tradeoffs we want to see and weigh them against the benefits they provide.  AND take the time to understand them.  Again I am glad you brought up this topic nostr:npub1qny3tkh0acurzla8x3zy4nhrjz5zd8l9sy9jys09umwng00manysew95gx since we really SHOULD be talking about it.  A federated trust model is inherently more centralized than the base chain.  This is going to necessarily lead to questions as to the incentives it creates.  I just suggest we walk in with both skepticism as well as an open mind.

Liquid is, in my opinion, one of the brightest lights in the realm of bitcoin scaling.  While we all hyperventilate over the formation of ETFs which are 100% centralized "Bitcoin Banks", #Blockstream is actually building the foundations of a distributed "Bitcoin Bank" that retains a degree of decentralization while offering strong benefits to those who choose to use the network.  AND the software is there for anyone else to implement with.

Carry on with talking about it, I'd say!