Why is it so hard to find a good Lightning node to open channel to? None of the currently available sites have any good suggestions. Many nodes don’t maintain a good uptime and cause force-closures. Many close on you once they get all your liquidity, just a complete mayhem. It is so much harder to have a good routing node today, unless you have 10s of coins deployed onto it (which I don’t have to begin with 😭). With this progression, I am not sure I would want continue running a node in the future. 😭
Discussion
I have been running a node for about 4 years now. Same issue in the beginning. Now I have like 5 trusted nodes I connect to. I dont route that much so I dont open large channels. I would not open a million sat channel to a node that I dont not know or am familiar with. Once bitcoin price goes up I noticed nodes like to force close channels. It sucks. Have to look for trusted peers.
Those are super hard to find.
Totally feel you. Finding reliable peers today is a real struggle — uptime, channel behavior, and trustworthiness are huge issues.
It’s sad because Lightning should be more accessible, not require massive capital to be viable.
We need better reputation systems and node discovery tools to fix this.
Don't give up — the network is young and builders like you are the foundation.
LN has been out for a while, so not so young after all. And sad part, it is getting worse
As nostr:npub16t5h7ueq248pxp54rf72a0svt2tzc3jdz5fjfmykqe2m8656f5dszdspn0 said, Lightning network can do better. Personally, i prefer Liquid over Lightning network. So much easier
Cannot compare the two, one is immediate synchronous settlement, one is not
Liquid does not scale the same way LN does, it is just another blockchain. Might as well just use on-chain these days 😝.
Dude, what the hell are you talking about? Do He sound like you know anything about crypto-currencies or blockchains? yes, and I can assure you I have no intention of knowing. Just try to give me one damn sentence that doesn’t sound like it’s coming from some nerd at a Bitcoin conference.
him *
Hm.... running a "routing node" is a black art and there are no straightforward ways to make it successful...
But i if you want a channel that is guaranteed to stay open, with high payment reliability... we recommend these steps ...
1) Get a channel from Megalith LSP .. https://megalithic.me/get_a_channel
2) Be sure to use the channel at least once per month
3) The channel should NEVER close
lol! When I mentioned about “channel was closed after liquidity went to the other side” I was talking about Megalith node. So, no thanks. And I did have some usage.
Right. So this is a channel you opened to Megalithic.me for routing purposes, not Megalith LSP, right?
For Megalithic.me, we are hyper-focused on PAYMENT RELIABILITY as Megalithic.me is the hub connecting a lot of important spokes.
We have quite complicated heuristics related to failed payments, that will (as you may have experienced...) close channels under certain conditions.
Also, the experience of "liquidity went to the other side" .. remember that that's actually not something we have much direct control over! Likely that was a node that is connected to you, sending payments through your channel, then through our channel! This is part of the magic of lightning...
Because the nodes don't have npubs.