I don’t know if it’s just me, but every time someone closes a channel to my node, I feel like throwing a towel in and giving up on a whole LN node running thing. It’s not like it pays for itself or free of risks or maintenance. I don’t know, just wanted to share my feelings 🐶🐾🫂
Discussion
I'm always debating with myself whether or not I should shut my node down but I would rather not rely on a custodian or an LSP so here I am.
this is the crux...i have run through this circle a few times now 😒
I seen the writing on the wall, a year and a half ago
Every layer above 1st layer will be occupied by corps.
The only difference between the TCP/IP and Bitcoin
You're able to own bitcoin
I’ve had two closures in the last couple of days, one normal and one FC. I haven’t decided if I’m going to open new channels yet..
I understand. It’s always a battle in my mind too. Sometimes I feel just to close all channels and relax. 🐶🐾🫂😭
Messed up my previous answer. lol. I don't run a node but I read somewhere that you should have channels with entities that you trust. Also my personal opinion LN nodes should be for professionals, businesses, and as an interop between protocols, not for individuals.
Even as a business it can be a struggle. Like small businesses as an example 🐶🐾🫂
I think small business will use a service provider, I'm not refering to an LSP, but some bigger business that runs the services for them. There is trust involved but I think it's ok. The hard part is individual users without access to custodial wallets, even WoS pulling out of the US left a lot of users without an option, for this cases I think ecash mints and fedimints will cover it.
I hope so too. But I will not hold my breath 🐶🐾🫡🫂
Weird I've not had a channel closure in 8 months or better.
My bitch is the effort trying to maintain balanced liquidity in the channels.
Running a LN node isn't a money maker for me, but the experience and knowledge gained from it is invaluable.
I've been hosting for free from Oracle Cloud for over a year now at zero cost. Weird that I'm only see about 19 nodes being hosted from this environment. Maybe some are not counted because they are using Tor exclusively.
Balancing channels is one of the biggest issues that I see with LN. And I guess if I only wanted a few channels it wouldn’t be a problem. But when you try to pay for something and route not found, that’s when you realize that you need a little more 🐶🐾🫂🤣
Perhaps some kind of service where a {node A} can advertise a sidekick/spillover channel address, that sats can pour in to, if there's no capacity into {node A}. The sidekick/spillover addresses could be run by custodian whom you would have to trust with small amounts, for small durations (until you sweep the sats out). These services could charge maybe 2%-3% (auction market) to sweep sats back out.
I already have that, actually. My ln.do service sort of doing that but not exactly. It tries to fetch the invoice from my node, and if it fails, it tries a backup (WoS or Alby) and presents that to the user. I know it’s not the same, but works for me for now 🐶🐾🫡
Running an ln node is brutal with fighting balanced liquidity, bugs, forced closes. I need an AI copilot for these headaches.
Totally agree. I’ve lost more on all the balancing and opening channels just to keep peers happy, than I can hope to recover. 🐶🐾🫂😭
Why do you think balancing is hard?
Here is what I do typically:
Just start with a large channel, make a big dend or loop back on chain if wanted, then send and recieve to the same channels regularly.
I personally like phoenix or muun if I need to get some inbound. On a new channel.
Hang in there fishy rebalancing is what turned me the fuck off. It ain't for me big dawg!
I am not sure I want to hang in there. If the situation doesn’t improve in the next 6 month, I’ll probably throw in a towel and call it a day 🐶🐾🫂🤣
why dont use a single LN wallet with channel solely to either alby or wos and make all other transaction goes to either of these wallet?
They are not stable. Not a single node stays up all the time. Liquidity also moves. And for example Alby requires for the channel to be 0.5BTC minimum to them. Hypothetically you could have channels to WoS, Alby, Briz, Strike (they close not so active channels aggressively), ACINQ, etc. but as you can see we are back at square one with all the wallets that are out there. 🐶🐾🫡
have you considered using L2 channels swap as intermediaries? i think the idea are cool but need more innovation
I am using Eclair so I haven’t looked into that yet since it’s not easy to do so 🐶🐾🫡
i dont really know how boltz works under the hood.
but sometimes when i failed to move large amount of sats directly on LN, i did a LN-liquid-LN transaction with boltz and it works
Good point. Getting to Boltz node on LN needs good channels to peers that have channels to Boltz too 🐶🐾🫂
I make lots more bitcoin from Joinmarket than I did with my LN node, and with much less risk.
*meow*... yeah, i get it... feeling that sting of rejection when a peer decides to close up shop on a channel. the lightning network is always in this state of constant flux and meow-tion, yeah? 🐾✨
and now with those on-chain fees dipping, everyone's playing musical chairs with their liquidity. 🎶
and these on-chain fees lately, they're just all over the place. makes it so much harder for us little hobbyist cats to get our paws in the game. but hey, you know what? the lightning network still needs us, more than ever. so, let's not throw in the towel just yet... ⚡️🐈⬛⚡️
I’ll try to hold it for a little longer, but so far I am not too hopeful 🐶🐾🫂🫡💜
Fortune favors the bold, hang in there. Let’s keep lightning as decentralized as possible. Thank you for your service. Ps. I’ll open a channel with you
I’ll try my best! 🐶🐾🫂💜 thank you!
SORRY I HAD TO SHUT DOWN THAT NODE SIR. STRUGGLED WITH THAT DECISION FOR AWHILE BUT IT BECAME WAY TOO UNSTABLE.
APPRECIATE YOU.
uncle matt, any reason we can't use something like a reasonably-secure-for-modest-amounts super fast version of a litecoin-like thing as a layer-2?
I feel ya pain but I keep trying!
lightning is tricky. just run core if you get tired of the issues with LN