Why not?
Discussion
Because I don’t need to. Custodial services work better for zaps anyway, and anything else I need to do on Lightning can be done with wallet apps like Breez/Zeus/Aqua. Your situation may differ.
I used to run 5 channels of 5 million sats each on my node, but recently decided to scale back to just 2 channels with 2 million sats each. Didn’t feel comfortable keeping all those sats in a hot multisig. Being self-sovereign isn’t cheap, but I still want to support the network while managing risk more conservatively. I guess it’s all about balance.
Does your node route payments? If not then you’re not supporting the network, even though you are maintaining self custody. It’s all about tradeoffs. That’s the biggest thing to understand. I used to run a node, and now I don’t. I can again if I need to.
I was before then I change to private channels.
Smart. It’s all most people need. I run Breez wallet (node in phone) for myself for having some funds on lightning for payments. For now, the only thing I’d need an always-on node for is receiving zaps and custodial is just easier for that than worrying about a node, channels, updating, backups, etc.