What are your goals? The most straightforward analog to running a lightning node is running a cashu mint. It's also a lightning node, so it won't be less work than now lol. But it's way easier to build on because it's a single api on a single server. Each ecash token is self authenticated. No accounts. The beauty of ecash is it's simplicity. 

 With recently merged NUT-18, I see the possibility of building a Cashu ‘node’ that can initiate payment requests and use whatever mint is available. All state is stored as nostr events. @calle 👁️⚡👁️