Genuine question: if I were to run a self-hosted lightning node for private channels for my family & myself on my desktop, what would happen if I periodically shut down the desktop overnight?
I’m looking into getting an umbrelOS/StartOS in the near future, but in the meantime to test it out, I’m curious to know the implications with running it on my desktop during the day & turning off the desktop overnight.
If you have poor uptime you want to choose good peers that are aware of your nodes habits and are okay with the downtime.
Your peers can always close or force close on you. Regular closes are fine. Force closes can lock up funds for a few weeks. Worst case scenario is your node is offline for multiple weeks during that force close window and does not attest to channel state in time and loses the funds in that channel.
But only if your peer lies to the Blockchain about the channel closing balance. Not many people have the skill to do this.
So I’m assuming (with limited knowledge in lightning channels) the downside to this is that when my peers regularly close the channel d/t excessive downtime(s), I’d have to pay the default fee required to open a new channel every single time?
Indeed that would be another cost to consider when a channel peer closes on you.
The best peers can be relationships you already have. They will be more likely to give you inbound liquidity and less likely to close on you without at least a message in advance.
But hell with on chain fees where they are the juice will almost certainly be worth the squeeze. With tooling where it is today too now is probably the best time ever to experiment with lightning.
