An epic tail of how I almost ended up being forced (for lack of funds) to leave the lightning node running business:

https://blog.bitcoinlizard.net/2022/08/09/drive-failure-on-lnd-node-or/

I just had the same thing happen on Snort. To bad you are unlikely to see my reply to your message!

Here is a great tip for Core Lightning node runners.

I have found that the automatically chosen fees when performing a cooperative closing are too low to confirm quickly during these times of high fees. Here is how you can close a channel and specify a fee:

lightning-cli -k close id= feerange='["52000perkb", "96000perkb"]'

This says to offer your peer (who is currently online) a range of 52 to 96 sat/vB. I found with another Core Lightning peer that we agreed upon the low fee that I offered so you should expect the same.

I find that I would much rather have any lightning related transaction confirm within a block or two rather than leaving open the possibility for fees to jump and have a channel end up in a limbo state.

I think that's right.

One thing I've learned from failed attempts at "orange pilling" is that you can't sell something to someone who believes they have no need for that thing. If "normies" are generally happy with their current social media platforms they don't have a strong enough incentive to learn a new platform. If/When they realize they need a censorship resistant platform #nostr will be there for them.

Hello #Bitcoin node runners who have some ability to monitor bandwidth usage! Have any of you noticed a large increase in bandwidth usage over the last 24-48 hours? Optimistically I'm hoping this is due to new nodes being bootstrapped and performing IBD. I'm just wondering if others are seeing this or perhaps I just had a handful of nodes that were downloading a lot from me over the past 2 days.

This is insane! Someone opened a channel to me with a fee that was too low to confirm. I took the TX ID and used this tool and viaBTC mined the TX! I'm not sure why they are doing this since it is costing the pool money so I wouldn't expect this to be around long term but enjoy it while you can!

I currently have 198 peer connections to my #Bitcoin node and have only 1 peer with whom I have a v2 Transport connection. At least I know it works but we have a long way to go!

Fellow #Bitcoin node runners:

If you are running Bitcoin Core 26.0 please enable this in your bitcoin.conf file:

v2transport=1

This will enable BIP324 v2 transport protocol which as I understand it causes communication to be encrypted between nodes that have v2transport enabled. I can see from my own node that there are very few other nodes have have BIP324 enabled! Lets bring those numbers up! You can check your own node with:

bitcoin-cli getpeerinfo | grep transport_protocol_type

and hopefully you see a few "v2".

I think it will go lower. The degens will run out of money eventually.

Now fee pressure from an ETF approval and #bitcoin price ripping, that fee pressure will be pretty persistent.

Merry Christmas!

Did I miss something?

I mean, I agree. It's terrible. I've run Core Lighting for a year or so now and been much happier.

LND sure garnered a ton of network effect by being fairly user friendly and getting application support out of the gate. Now the technical debt is piling up.

Well it works so that's cool! What wallet were you using?

Testing LNURL Withdraw. Doesn't seem to be working with Phoenix or perhaps not working at all. You can try to claim the free 111 sats!

nostr:npub1qny3tkh0acurzla8x3zy4nhrjz5zd8l9sy9jys09umwng00manysew95gx - The guy that you are talking about on RHR the last two weeks who goes back and from between pumping and fudding #Bitcoin is Scott Minerd of Guggenheim Investments.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/guggenheim-minerd-predicted-bitcoin-15k-185537446.html

Look at it as the KYC-free premium. Also I'm not having to use natural gas to heat my home in the winter. I'm going to be mining for a long time!

As a node runner for a couple years now I generally agree with your sentiment. However you aren't doing yourself any favors running LND. Switch to Core Lightning and be happy (or happier at least).

I think this is the right move for Braiins and I hope they attract more hash as a result of the change.

The only downside I see is there is no way to accurately pay out the transaction fees since miners are paid proactively rather than based on the fees collected in a block. Those fees have been pretty material for a while now.

In that case I don't see the problem. On chain transactions are expensive at the current time.

They are going to generate a 5% return by lending #Bitcoin. I'm sure this is going to end well!

Here is the problem. On a new Phoenix wallet with a newly opened channel all of the liquidity is on your side of the channel. As a result you don't have any inbound liquidity to receive a lightning transaction so Phoenix does a submarine swap which increases the size of you channel but is an expensive on chain transaction due to the current backlog of transactions in the mempool.

If you were to do a bunch of spends from your Phoenix wallet in the form of many zaps or a purchase at Bitrefill or something, those sats would move to the other side of the channel. You would then have a good amount of inbound liquidity and a transaction like the one you are trying to receive would come through as a regular lightning payment with very minimal fees.

Phoenix is an excellent wallet but since it's non-custodial you do have to think about channel management to a degree.