Topic: Lightning Network Observer - page 34. (Read 14270 times)

One of my first channels I ever opened was to them!  I don't play much just because I am not a great fan of -EV games...  But it's fun to dump a few sats at it from time to time.  But it is STILL open and has routed afew million SATS.  Not my busiest channel, but been up since 11/2019!

And yes.  If the lightning network can work, I believe we will see non-KYC types of services a major driver.

Well would ya look at that?!?  I am having dinner tonight!


I was thinking a poker game that is 100% lightning would be cool...  My original thought was all the hands would literally pay out to lightning addresses each time.  But I suppose that would never be foolproof.  Someone DID make one that works in a more standard fashion. 

https://lightning-poker.com/

Shower thought. I saw this roulette game built on top of Lightning, https://lightning-roulette.com/

NO KYC, No registration required, No privacy-leak risks. It's just the casino, you, and the Lightning Network. It's like DirectBet, but off-chain. What if NO KYC services built directly on top were the value proposition of Lightning? Many people in the community don't like KYC, no? Would that help onboard more users?

I haven't, but from their demos it looks very nice and easy to use. However I don't fully understand how the technology works. Since it runs on Lightning, compared to something like SatoChip, there needs to be a Lightning node up and running at all times, somewhere. This could be in the phone app or in a box / node at home. Worst case though, they're just running a custodial wallet for you, on their servers. That would be pretty bad and I'd then much rather just use my non-custodial setup with either a node-in-an-app implementation or an application that's just a remote for the node at home. Through LNURL this is pretty easy to do.

There is a big issue with 'rebalancing' via reverse direction payments in a different route.. lets call it snowballing (to stick with the weather themed buzzwords)

edited to remove big numbers, walls of text because some people cant cope with details

i used small numbers and images for those that hate reading/thinking


oh and i forgot to add.. what if any other node on the loop also wanted to correct their balance
causing them to affect others, which then requires those others to correct themselves. which then needs further corrections

enjoy playing that little scenario out.. and please dont use utopian dream fantasy scenarios. try rationale and logic when running scenarios. it will enlighten you..

need i also forget.
that if its assumed that when making a payment. it has fee's. where by having to do later re-balance (which also incurs fee's) means nodes then have to account for the rebalance fee as a extra charge to add into the payment side to break even.

EG
if fee's were normally. 1msat per 20 per hop meaning normally
A->B₁->L = 1msat

then B would have to include a fee for its future inevitable re-balance
(remember K charges more)
meaning
although shifting 100 via BAKLB would be
B->A₅->K₁₀->L₅->B = 20msat fee for 100 payment
for B to rebalance its whole channel.  

so knowing it costs 20msat to rebalance 100. he would charge a extra 4msat per 20
to cover the future rebalance of an allotment of 20msat payment used. plus his usual 1msat for the payment itself

thus fee's increase.

also. this would then make A-B L more expensive than say A-K-L
so you will see different route used and then those new routes would need to rebalance and adjust their fee's accordingly. which snowballs into more nodes charging more.
and more re-balance events happening rather that product/good purchase events happening.

has anyone of you already had these lightning nfc cards in the hands and in the best case already tried somewhere?
find these cards with the motifs in any case successful


https://www.coincorner.com/TheBoltCard

Interesting topic! I'm also interested to hear how others deal with it. A question though: how long did you observe those channels (where all the liquidity moved to one side and stayed there)?
Since I don't have a lot of time to manage my nodes, whenever I've faced this, I kind of 'waited it out'; some channels eventually started to get some activity both ways, other didn't - those I just closed.

What I'd do differently from you is that opening channels to big hubs like exchanges is surely a pretty guaranteed way to get activity in them, however incentivizes / increases centralization of the network. That's why I don't have such channels except of a small one with the 'zerofeerouting' node, since I had some change on a node.

From time to time, I like to call lightning-cli rebalanceall or even do it manually sometimes. It shifts everything around a bit and tends to route more after I do that. I'm sure something like this also exists for lnd.

FEES AND CHANNEL BALANCE... thoughts and questions!

Hello lightning observer!!!

OK.  It's time for a post in here, isn't it?

I have some questions that some of you galaxy brains might be able to answer.  I have been running an LND node since 2019 (not counting the one I had in 2018 that I killed), and only recently added a CLN node about 6 months ago.  My questions have to do with both, but the LND node sees much more traffic with between 200-2000 transactions routed a day generally.  

I have 4 channel state scenarios I see.  But only want to really consider the LAST one.

• Some channels seem to want to almost auto balance themselves.  In this case I assume my channel partner is a little OCD and is doing that.  I have tried some of that myself, but it does not suit my personality really.  I am more interested in using passive techniques to balance my channels more organically.
  
• A few channels seem to slosh back and forth entirely.  I have some fairly large (~0.16BTC) channels with the exchanges that have come on board, Bitfinex, Kraken. And these channels like to slosh back and forth wildly.  Makes sense.  Someone wants to deposit $3k worth of bitcoin on Kraken?  Well my channel can handle that, and then same with withdrawals.
• Some of my channels just don't do much.  I assume these are nodes with low traffic and low use.  I have begun to close these to instead open channels with folks that fall into the other three categories.  Waste of time, these.
• Then there is my fourth type I would like your help with!  There are the channekls that see great deals of action in ONE DIRECTION, then stop.  In general, I open a channel to an channel partner, and the all the liquidity rushes over to one side then just stops.  Boom.  Done.  It can go either way, but generally it goes to their side.

I see two ways to deal with these:

1.  Once the liquidity is over to their side, then just close the channel, and open a new one.  Lather, Rinse, Repeat.
2.  Coax the liquidity back over to the dry side of the channel.
(3. Well I could also just leave it alone and end up with a channel that is effectively #3 up there.  And that is pretty much what has been happening.)

So.  The easy solution is to close and reopen the channel.  I have even notice that certain commercial LSPs you open channels to, once the liquidity has all rushed over to the other side then slam the channel closed themselves.  Wham, bam, thank you mam.  And actually, I plan to start setting those channels back up with a fee structure that will make more sats than it costs to open and close the channel, and start being that kind of liquidity... In fact these sorts of things may be the most profitable of all.  

But my bias is to basically run as much liquidity as I can without losing money.  So I am glad to charge NO FERES AT ALL if I can figure out how to keep the liquidity moving back and forth...  

So that's the question.  What strategy would you guys use to, once all the liquidity has flowed to one side, coax it back over to the other?  In fact some of my channels with various bitcointalk forum users are the main ones that work this way... I honestly do not need to make any money off a channel we share.  I just want to help make the LN be a success.  I would even consider closing and reopening the channel over and over... but in that case I would probably want to make a couple thousand sats on the the life of the channel to make that worth doing...  So I am more interested in sustaining open channels without closing at all (which, frankly is the point right?)

Hope you are all well!

Any ideas?

PS.  I forgot to mention one thing.  I am biased towards ZERO FEES.  Like I said I just want the damn lightning network to actually succeed.  But I do not want to LOSE money.  So though I prefer very low fees, I do not mind tweaking them for the sake of accomplishing the ability to keep a channel open definitely... The incentives for running a lightning node are actually somewhat elegant the more I think about them!

Arcane research published the second volume of  “State of Lightning” research paper:



Foreword by Lyn Alden:

the lightning network ecosystem is constantly growing and getting bigger and bigger

 Roastbeef Keynote from the Open Source stagein Miami.
(I am listening it at 0.5x, sorry)



I would say Lightning network is the big winner in this conference.

And still we have to wait for Jack Mallers announcement!

Very Interesting development:



Here the official announcement on Lightning Labs blog:

Announcing Taro: A New Protocol for Multi-Asset Bitcoin and Lightning �💱�


The protocol piggyback the LN without the need of any upgrade to the nodes:



Uhm, in Layman terms: TaRo allows the transfers of digital assets over the LN, thus in extreme speed and economics.
First applications that comes to mind: Stable coins and collectibles.

Reading from Bitcoin Magazine:



The conclusion is relevant as Taro is a solution leveraging bitcoin feature, without resorting to external, inferior, solutions:

Giacomo Zucco had a brutal realization, that his RGB project was just been outsmarted by @roastbeef.



But he took it in light spirit as good ideas have are meant to be eventually copied!

It is now official, as reported by Bitcoin Magazine:


KRAKEN EXCHANGE INTEGRATES BITCOIN’S LIGHTNING NETWORK

Finally, we have an explanation for the growth of the funds in Krakenks LN node, which didn’t flew under the radar in the past weeks:

an official message on the part of the Kraken exchange is still pending. if it is then so far, I would add it here then again with

https://cointelegraph.com/news/kraken-users-report-bitcoin-lightning-network-availability

I like your weekend projects! I have a few spare Raspi (with screens) to spare for a mini Monitor!
Or either you could add to the welcome screen into Raspiblitz!

I just had a look online, seems it's an iOS app called 'BASIO'.


However, there's this public API for:

• Mean LN channel size
• Median LN channel size
• LN capacity
• # LN channels
• # LN nodes

It's not the one the app seems to use. https://api.glassnode.com/v1/metrics/lightning/network_capacity_sum?a=btc returns:

So a slightly lower number. Maybe it's the 1ML API, seems closer.

It can be used using: https://1ml.com/statistics?json=true - I think I'll use that for my code. New weekend project, I guess.

i can't help you there atm. but if i get more info i would post it here.

It's already! If you want a quick, easy setup and immediately be able to use it, I recommend to download https://breez.technology/ on your phone.
If you want more control, better privacy and better help the network, I recommend to follow my guide on how to set up your own full-fledged Bitcoin Node with Lightning on it as well.

When does Lightening become available for everyone to use? Am sure when this becomes available or integrated for all, some altcoins will just die. It will make the transaction fees from exchanges ineligible

Do you have an API for this? I'd like to hang something fun on my wall; recently acquired one of these LED matrices.
I'd probably have it switch between BTC amount in circulation and dollar valuation as well as LN info such as what you've got in that dashboard type image.

and the number of Bitcoins continues to rise on the lightning network ... also the number of nodes and channels is very remarkable and pleasing