Random thought on UX idea for non-custodial lightning:

Automatically remove 1% (or maybe 0.5%, whatever seems to map out properly) of every transaction as a fee, but just allocate it toward a hidden "fee balance" in the interface, even though the sats are still available in the wallet.

So whenever on-chain fees are needed, it comes from this hidden balance instead of as a huge fee for one of the payments being received (of course until it runs out)

In the case of the person closes out the channel or withdrawing everything, and they have like 50k sats still in their fee reserve, they can get it back as a "refund on future fees not used" or something.

Basically have it automatically try to balance the expected fee costs but only do it *visually* in the wallet, and have it so you can see the amount in the advanced settings or something. And also have it be tapped into in the case of a payment that needs an extra 100 sats or something and notify the user that it was "pulled from the fee reserve" (or whatever best wording would help inform that)

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Discussion

Pour one our for godzilla

I understand what you’re saying Guy, and fee flattening will definitely become a thing in advanced Bitcoin wallets.

My only thought is that most people who use Bitcoin in a non-custodial manner already have a basic understanding that fees are different between the layers, and lots of people who would be frustrated by this nuance are using much simpler custodial wallets anyway.

I’d love to see a good product come to market which attempts this though.

Agree that unspendable sats balance, due to (potential) on chain fees, is a UX nightmare.

It makes self-custodial Lightning usage much more consistent with the behaviours of a 'service provider', than that of an end user...

I like it. Kind of like a round-up program. Maybe draw up some markups to address the others' fears?