Well, I just lost 0.01 ₿ 1,000,000 Sats ($1,000) dollars trying to set up lightning.
Anyone who says lightning "works" is a bold face liar.
On-chain ONLY!
Discussion
How?
Well, so I opened a channel thinking it would be outbound/ inbound but I closed that one just fine.
Then I attempted to open one that I thought was inbound but it appeared it was outbound, so I forced closed it (in the hopes to close it faster).
Then I reopened a second channel that might have actually been inbound but I thought was outbound, and closed it but then I deleted the app, in the hopes to clear the queue, & reset everything, I recovered the seed, and it shows the 3rd channel as offline but doesn’t show the first two 😑.
So, yeah, I don’t know.
Get reckless! Yes when you open a channel to some other node it’s always outbound liquidity. You would need a friend or someone else to open a channel to you, that would be inbound liquidity.
But if you closed the channels with the balance on your end the amount should be back in your wallet minus opening fees.
You can biy inbound liquidity for very low cost.
Guys please get some experience before saying these things. :)
Should have used Monero 👀
But some lessons are learned that way by pain 👀
Do you understand now why ligthing sucks?
Do you understand now why more than 90% of ligthning is used through custodians?
I know that but I was trying to prove a point that if someone who’s more technically inclined like me is having issues with it, how are normal people supposed to figure it out.
Even Seth, who’s an expert had issues with lightning.
Custodial lightning is the only way that works but custodial lightning is cucking.
self hosted LN node and self custody wallet works perfectly for me, even over tor, and I wouldn't even call myself an "expert".
Who's Seth? lol 😆
Seth is the former CEO of passport, and The Current VP of Cake.
He went all in on Bitcoin for a year, doing everything Bitcoin only, and eventually went back to multi-coin.
I think I figured out LN after watching 3 to 5 videos online, then I set it and forget it.
its ok, my grand-mother had trouble becoming a sys-admin, so im not surprised he had issues :-D
I don't know the setup that you, or him used.
I know Seth is an intelligent person, he knows a lot about stuff like this, and this was during his Bitcoin maxi phase, so I'm not sure what happened.
I've read many cases of people losing funds, problems with routing, and channels, even from dedicated BTC Maxis too, who have always been BTC Only.
In my case, I think I'm starting to figure it out more but half of the battle luckily is possible now with modern tech, node hosting in phone, I simply don't have the resources to dedicate to self hosted lightning, I'm balancing everything on a $1,000 budget unlike many wealthy people who can afford tools like Pis, Start9s, and other hubs, focusing on channels, and I'm getting somewhere but half of my funds are stuck in channel purgatory right now.
I run StartOS on a $100 dollar Thinkpad from 2012.
never lost any funds
routing is usually resolved by opening more than one or 2 channels.
hosting your LN node on your phone will give you the issues you are describing.
But you will never know unless you try for yourself and take in some education.
Relying on other peoples' experiences is never a reliable way to gain accurate knowledge.
Well, yeah, that's why I'm trying to learn, so far it's been trial, and error.
Unfortunately with money, trial, and error is a bad thing to do.
I'm utilizing Zeus since I thought it would be the sweetspot of it all but it appears PC route might be better but honestly I don't know If I want to double down, might go custodial in worse case but keep it minimized.
Might i recommend phoenix wallet. It handles the liquidity and channel splicing and management and is bolt 12 compliant for additional privacy, and works as well as a custodial solution. For payments, at this point, I've opted for monero for a stupid proof solution.
I will try this as an alternative and compare my experience thank you.
But....not your mode, not your rules.
Have you tried blixt wallet?
I use Zeus for mobile that connects to my node, no issues.
Desktop I use the alby extension that connects to alby hub on my node.
No issues except alby hub it logs me out once a month and I have to log in again.
I setup start9os on a mini computer on 3 separate occasions and had failures each time.
Definitely difference in quality between a mini PC and a ThinkPad. Quality of SSD matters too.
This is a powerful node platform
You should have 16gb ram and brand name 2 TBSSD
Apparently, being a member of the upper class is required to run a dedicated lightning node. I was sold on the idea that this was scalable and low resource intensive.
Yep, I'm a dev and have tried multiple times to setup lightning, lost a lot of money with experimenting. Where did your sats go? If you got a channel close it should eventually revert back to on chain sats, assuming you kept the seed.
Yeah I did a lot of lightning research a few years back and even had a node running with RTL etc. I stopped short of opening channels since I knew I would not have the time free to do channel management. Also rebalancing was non-trivial.
mind providing details so plebs can understand the mistake? damn sorry you lost that much
So far I've gotten half of it back.
The other half might be in channel purgatory, anywhere between a day to two weeks to reclaim funds, hopefully.
If you're using Zeus what I can say is don't select 12 months on purchase inbound channel, it won't load for some reason.
And hitting the plus on the right to create a channel ONLY creates outbound channels (to send), not inbound, or bidirectional, you will need to select purchase inbound channel to make inbound lightning (for receiving zaps).
When clicking purchase inbound channel, only select one of the 1, 3, and 6 month options, to reiterate 12 months does not work or load (for whatever reason).
Also channel creation can take anywhere between 10 minutes up to an hour plus to create, always assume an hour, and 30 minutes to be safe, and just wait for channels to be created, don't try to close it, or force close it during creation, and DO NOT DELETE THE APP with channels that are pending.
Also make sure to hit the three lines (Hamburger Menu) on the top left --> Backup Wallet --> I understand then click all 24 things, and write down the seed in order (DO NOT Share It with anyone)
Then go to embedded node --> disaster recovery --> export recovery data to clipboard to make sure you have your save states in place, this helps with lightning nodes in case you screw up, I already made too many save states so I lost the list of my channels but if I had the save state I would've been able to recover the channels, and see the status.
Everything else I'm still figuring out.
Once I get everything hopefully settled, and figured out I intend to make a guide for this to help reduce the odds people screw up.