Why free? Lightning nodes are not cost neutral. Force closes, channel open/close, rebalancing fees...
Why lose sats = good? Are you planning to grow channels at zero fees then raise once your more positioned as a routing node?
We are pleased to meet you 🤝 Please allow us to introduce ourselves:
Hi, we are a free-routing lightning node, new on the lightning and nostr networks.
We are dedicated to serving and helping all the lightning and nostr communities with 100% free routing.
All the channels we open (or get opened to us) get set to ZERO fees:
Base fee: ZERO forever
Fee rate: ZERO forever
We would love to meet fellow nostriches and node operators and connect with all of you . Please contact us at any time even just to say hello.
We would also love if you would open a channel to us to increase our reach and our routing efficiency.
Together, we can all grow and make the lightning network (and bitcoin) more resilient to authoritarian control.
Free routing
Free expression
Freedom from controls
You can find more info about our node here:
https://amboss.space/node/02b4552a7a85274e4da01a7c71ca57407181752e8568b31d51f13c111a2941dce3
If you would like to open a channel to us (any capacity), our node's URI (tor) is:
02b4552a7a85274e4da01a7c71ca57407181752e8568b31d51f13c111a2941dce3@vs2d2o6c255eit5tdvm5km6gzcimzlgrt7s7xhibijk253pew76bpcad.onion:9735
Please help us help the community defeat all censorship and financial control.
#introductions #bitcoin #lightning #node #plebchain
Discussion
When the experienced capitalists enter the stage, we should be ready with incentivized self-funded systems. We're taking over the world. We need to harden our model or we will be crushed by the wave of inflowing capital. It won't be long before the cost of a forced close is worth more than a month's median wages in 80% of the world. Not charging fees will lead to lightning network centralization. Profit isn't evil; it is an indication that your economic model works.
We're not profit orientated when it comes to this node, and you'd be right when saying we will lose money.
However, the sole purpose of this node is to help everyone on the lightning network by making it as cheap as possible to route payments. Some might find this naive, but since we can cover all our costs from our other sources of income then why not?
We think this small sacrifice of ours can greatly improve the lightning network one day.
Our plan is to never charge anything for our routing.
I don't think it naive or wish you ill tidings. Your intentions are noble as you made clear in your post.
However, LN incentives are critical to network decentralization. I simply posit that if nodes operate primarily on incentives external to the network (e.g., "doing a good service", "connecting my business", "growing the lightning network", " spreading bitcoin adoption") then the network will be driven by those incentives and some you don't like (gatekeeping access to LN, excluding OFAC UTXO funded channels, excluding tor-only nodes).
I argue this is bad for decentralization which, I imagine, is the very goal of your endeavor. Please, charge fees, try to break even / make a profit, and then, operating lightning nodes will be incentivized to the larger community.
If we want to grow the network, promote growth through the internal incentives of the lightning network. Profitable adoption is sustainable. Subsidized adoption promotes external incentives the greatest of which will be exercising centralized control.
You make a compelling point which we will definitely take into consideration.
Thanks 💜
Sounds fishy. Are you guys Feds?