I can see if an amount too big, it could really mess up the channel's liquidity, is there an amount that the community agree on that's the limit I should use on lightning?
It doesn't matter if you send many small payments or few large ones. Just use the Lightning Network whenever you need it. If your channel becomes unbalanced, you can use third-party services to refill your channel. My node routed quite a few large payments (up to 900k satoshi) so there are people who don't care about the size. Also, large payments can be split and routed through different channels.
IF channels (other route hops before destination) had capacity then splitting can be done.
IF user has multiple channels and multiple balances to have that option
many if's you forgot to mention
he is not talking about the value HE has. so advice about HIM rebalancing is not the issue. its about making a payment along a route to a destination.. the liquidity of the route and the average value routes have across the network to have a good chance of success every time.
he is talking about the "payment success" rate thing.. like the near 100% for sub$1 amounts, the 10% success rate for pizza amounts in 2018.. or even this example more recently
My node has successfully routed 143 payments (until the 31st October) with ~0.09 BTC capacity and 5 active channels....
You might be surprised by the number of failed forwards - 389 payments. Why are there so many of them? More than 95% of them failed at some further point in the route. It's difficult to tell how many of them were legitimate payments and not channel/route probing attempts. I used some website a couple of time to probe routes from/to my node and each time I would get another three failed payments.
maybe better to try to re-guage what a "payment success" % rate would be for 2021 for different amounts and actually answer the guys question rather then hide the issue with a "doesnt matter, just use LN whenever you want".. because from
your own experience of 389 fails.. your experience is not a "doesnt matter just use LN whenever you want" thing, is it?.. heck you even had 5 channels and still had a 73% fail rate
even you know that routes need available balance along the route of multi-hops. and it does matter if one of those hops is bottlenecked. the guy wants to know whats the current easy amount that should pretty much always go through
your answer of "if you send many small amounts" is empty. as he was literally asking what "small amount" is, before you even said it..
EG most people are not going to open 5 funded channels just to buy the occasional coffee or pizza. most will just want to open one channel
so imagine in the non-utopian world(called the real world of real use). someone wants to buy a $18 pizza
but between the buyer and the pizza place there is a bottleneck
the bottlenecker only has $10 spare. and you want to send $18. sending it as 3x of $6 instead, is still going to fail.. because the bottleneck still only has $10!
meaning first 3rd, the bottleneckers $10 becomes $4, when sending $6
then the second 3rd fails because only $4 isnt enough to send $6
then the third 3rd fails because only $4 isnt enough to send $6
so the payer cant then send $18 to its destined destination to buy a $18 pizza because only a third can get through
so its not as easy as 'dont worry' as you pretend. and deep down you know it... you have personally experienced it. having over 380 fails with amounts under 0.0096btc (11% of your capacity)
so be honest, your now a big part of the altnet known as LN. so be part of the honest dialog about limitations and issues. how about try to actually gauge what "small" is in regards to "payment success"
if the largest 'success' you had was 11% of your capacity.
but you had a success:fail ratio of about 143:389.. atleast be honest about it and not pretend LN is easy and use whatever you want