Setting up and maintaining good liquidity on your Lightning node is absolutely the biggest hurdle for regular folks running their own Lightning node. All of that can be obfuscated away with custodial Lightning, or semi-custodial Lightning+Liquid, though.
"Who do you connect to?"
This largely depends on your reason for running a node. If it is as a commercial business, paying for incoming liquidity from reliable liquidity provider is probably a good route to go, but yes, it has a cost. You are asking them to lock up scarce sats into a channel with you that they could be putting to other use.
If you are running a personal node, connecting to other plebs you know who already run a node is a great option, and connecting to a couple other larger nodes that are run by services you use. For instance, I have a channel with ACINQ because I also use Phoenix wallet, and I have a channel with Boltz.exchange because I use them for transferring back and forth between Lightning and on-chain.
"Why would they connect to you?"
If you are opening a channel to another node, you are providing them incoming liquidity. Most folks appreciate that. They may close the channel if they notice that no transactions are ever routed through it after a bit of time, though, as it indicates that you aren't well connected enough for them to receive through you.
It also seems hard to be valuable liquidity. Because for that you need well connected channels to be routed through, I guess. But for that you need to find the channel partners. And in the beginning you wont be a good partner, I guess, because you wont have from 1sec to another ebough channels.
What is a rule of thumb in your opinion for number of channels and channel liquidity for a family node?
That's going to depend a lot on how much your family is using Lightning.
I have 7 channels and about 20 million sats total liquidity, with just a bit more of that being outbound than inbount. But then, I use Lightning WAY more than the rest of my family that is sharing the node. It's probably more than we need, honestly.
Thanks!
Probably similar. At least for now.
I guess as you are the main user of your node, you dont have to rebalance that often, or?
And do you think a home node would also be sufficient for a starting side project? I dont want to invest into anything serious until I dont see interest. A home node is already an "investment" anyway.
I haven't ever bothered with rebalancing. I receive via my channels that have inbound liquidity whenever I stack, and then I zap some out to folks here on Nostr and eventually build up enough to send some out to Boltz.exchange to swap to on-chain.
You only really need to worry about keeping channels well balanced if you want your node to be used frequently for routing.
A home node makes a great starting project. A perfect time to start while on-chain fees are so low, too.
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Did ACINQ connect with you easily?
When you asked to connect, you already had connected with other bitcoiners, right?
Yes, but they were very new channels. You also aren't "asking." You just open the channel. If they don't want to keep it, they just close it.
Thanks! And how about inbound liquidity?
You've got four main ways to get inbound liquidity.
1. Pay for it from a liquidity provider.
2. Some kind pleb noderunner opens a channel to you.
3. Send sats out of your channel and back to on-chain by using Boltz.exchange.
4. Build it up naturally as you spend your sats.
I generally go with option 3, unless you know someone personally who is willing to lock up a decent amount of sats into a channel with you.
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