I love the idea of the #lightning network, but it's super unreliable outside of trivial amounts of money. And worse, the error messages when it fails are incomprehensible.

For example, I just tried to buy a gift card from bitrefill with nostr:nprofile1qqsrf5h4ya83jk8u6t9jgc76h6kalz3plp9vusjpm2ygqgalqhxgp9gpz4mhxue69uhk2er9dchxummnw3ezumrpdejqzyrhwden5te0dehhxarj9ekxzmnyqyt8wumn8ghj7un9d3shjtnwdaehgu3wvfskueq555fk2 and was told I didn't have enough local funds. The balance is Zeus is larger than the amount I'm trying to send, so that seems like a terrible error message.

The amount is more than I have in any single channel, but that's why I have multiple channels and even a multi-path payment fails with that same error. If I need a bigger channel, 🙄 fine. Tell me that. And tell me how I can increase the size of an existing channel with Olympus.

Here's my point: If I have the #sats, in self-custody in lightning, I should be able to send as many of them as I want. In the event it does fail, I should be presented with an error message that clearly explains why.

This doesn't seem like it is too much to ask.

And, yes, I plan on setting up an always-online lightning node soon enough so I can complain about more lightning software failures, or sing their praises, whichever is appropriate.