Replying to Avatar Matt

I'm not sure which of those does or should have more responsibility or complexity. Especially since you can use either one for both functions.
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mike 5mo ago

Some key takeaways from my years of Lightning node running.

1. Backup your channels, because if they crash you can't recover your funds without them.

2. Open large channels because opening / closing channels during high fee periods will wipe out all income / profits from small channels.

3. Open small channels when starting because f***ing up 100K Sats is much less painful than 10M Sats

4. Yes points 2 and 3 directly contradict each other

5. The ROI on liquidity is less than 3%, if you want to make money, stick to the fiat world.

6. It's fun to learn about Lightning by playing with it, but don't under estimate how centralised and competitive the market is. There are individual node runners with 20+ BTC of liquidity failing to compete with large corporate operators.

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Matt 5mo ago

Thanks for adding to my bearishness 😂

I've never aimed to make profit personally from Lightning. I just want to use it to transact. Frankly, it sucks for that purpose no matter which tools I've used. So I'm not sure what the point of it is. The whole flow into Bitcoin for me was that Bitcoin isnt private and you eventually won't be able to buy coffees on chain. Use this thing called Lightning. Cool, except it sucks ass unless I'm willing to cross my fingers (point 1) and yolo into something less reliable and more complex. And going the centralized route only obfuscates those things (I could still get fucked) AND loses the privacy improvement.

I think I've misunderstood Lightning from the start, likely due to miseducation from good intentioned people.

Hopefully things improve. I'm not bearish in that I don't think it can or will. It just doesn't seem to be. It seems more like everyone thinks it's finished and ready. Maybe it is, but it simply isn't made for me if it is.

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mike 5mo ago

The easier something is to use, the harder it is to provision.

As a user of Lightning, it works incredibly well, as a provisioner it is complex and requires skill and understanding.

It's worth learning the skill before you decide whether it is for you or not.

Fiat banking is difficult and costly, which is why there aren't many of them, using a fiat bank is easy.

Same as NOSTR, at the surface level it is easy, as you start taking control of your eco-system it becomes harder.

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Zaikaboy 5mo ago

I've run a ⚡ node for 5 years and sort of agree. I'd caveat that nowadays 100k channels are also painful to lose for most plebs but concur that larger channels are easier to maintain and more useful. 2m channels for me. Making money is not going to happen for the small guy, so set fees at zero and 3 larger channels dotted globally. Also, don't go public. Privacy is a thing

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mike 5mo ago

Good advice 👍

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Matt 5mo ago

I actually prefer the most private option. It's one of the reasons I gained initial interest.