Get Phoenix wallet and load it with a solid sum of sats to pay for opening of a channel. Try to spend about half the sats before loading it with more sats.
Discussion
Spend spend spend lol! 🤣
Spend or swap back on-chain. But honestly, LN is for spending.
small amounts, I agree.
it ends up not being worth it if you self custody for a chump change hot wallet ie: LN.
Last thing I want is to get stuck for a failed transaction at a street food vendor in El Salvador or Mexico which is were im going in 2 weeks. I use Phonix and Zeus, but will not be going on vacation without a Wallet of Satoshi instance on my device thats for sure!
Do you have to open a channel to use lightning network?
If you want to have your #sats in your own custody, you have to open a channel - a smart contract on #Bitcoin main chain.
There are fully custodial wallets where you don't have to open any channels like Wallet of Satoshi but in that case, you don't own your #sats, the wallet provider does hold it in their channel. It's OK for small amounts like less than a million sats or something, I guess. Most people use them here for zapping.
I think a fully custodial wallet is what I want. Where I can transfer a small amount of BTC (which is self-custody) for zapping and receiving zaps. How does the wallet provider make money? Do they take a percentage?
They take small fees from the transactions and some sell other services like swapping between on-chain and LN. We are so early, many operators are first building the solutions and care about earnings later.