Topic: The Lightning Network FAQ - page 30. (Read 33677 times)

Sounded like a weird question at first but got me wondering... Seems that Mike Hearn pointed to this thread : Instant TX for established business relationships (need replacements/nLockTime) as the Lighning Network's primordial forum soup


I fired up an umbrel node also. Took ~4days for sync but after this it does not display the info properly...


Only had a 500GB SSD around so I assume that might be the issue. It still has 24GB available though. Will retry with a 1TB as soon as I get my hands on one 

Check this too
https://twitter.com/arcbtc/status/1443933320056823809

Found some cool creations; sharing!

The Quickening — Bitcoin Lightning Network PoS Terminal (<$8)
https://github.com/arcbtc/Quickening

LNURLPoS — Cheap, offline(!), DIY bitcoin lightning-network PoS
https://github.com/arcbtc/LNURLPoS

I wouldn't say I "want" to be a Lightning Router, rather, after I'd installed those apps (on my PC and Android phone) I saw there was activity, now there is none and I was wondering if there might be an error in the app or network.

Now I can see the activity I once had was more by fluke than anything (and no, I'm not connected to overly large nodes, but by the same token I'm not connected to the same nodes I once was).

If you want to be a Lightning router, I would highly suggest installing a dedicated machine in your network running Linux and c-lightning or lnd.

Opening channels between two already connected (large) nodes makes little sense, so try creating new connections that don't already exist. It's also a lot of trial and error; there's no perfect recipe on how to create the perfect channels. If you see no traffic over a link for a while, close it and open another etc.

You also may want to explore if the nodes that you'd like to connect through you already have (direct or indirect) connections via Lightning explorers like https://amboss.space/ or https://1ml.com/.

Thanks for the suggestion, I'll have a look and see if I can get it working, otherwise, I'll just slowly empty the funds to enable me to have inbound capacity on those apps with just a nominal amount left in reserve for a rainy day.

I don't think that Eclair Mobile has ever been capable of routing payments. I believe that it creates only private channels. You would be required to keep the app active in the background all the time. Your available balance might have been slightly shifting because new commitment transactions with different fees are signed periodically. The founder of the channel always pays the closing fee so that's why it's deducted from your balance.

As for the Zap, you can actually download and run lncli to manage the built-in LND node. See this guide. Once you have installed it, you should be able to use lncli updatechanpolicy command to modify the fee policy of your every channel.

Neither Zap for PC nore Eclair for Android have any mechanism to change the fees collected.  Zap you can set an upper limit for fees paid on out bound (presumably from yourself) while Eclair you can set a satoshi per kb on the block-chain transactions, but not for Lightning.


I know one node does have two nodes (one each clear and onion) however not all of the nodes I currently have are particularly large.

To inspire another member to do some work for you (in the event that s/he does not know the answer right of the top of his/her head), maybe you could explain some efforts (work) that you have already attempted in this matter, and maybe even through such efforts, you would end up finding the information that you are seeking and further be able to provide that information to the rest of us who are following this thread?  

Wow a hypothetical way to actually contribute value!!! rather than appearing as someone who merely is striving to cause work upon others.

That's very likely the cause. You should check if those large nodes have channels between themselves.


I have a channel to both Bitfinex and Nicehash. I routed quite a few large payments between these two nodes at the beginning. It turned out that they are connected directly so I guess their channel was often unbalanced at that time. Unfortunately, Bitfinex has changed their fee policy and I very rarely see any activity between those two channels now.

What do you have your fees set to? If they are too high even if you are a more direct route most wallets will still choose a cheaper path.
Beyond that, the only other thought is that some people have connected to places they want to spend directly.

-Dave

All of the balances remain stagnant/unchanged unless I make a transaction myself. 


I *was* connected to a few of the users in these threads that have posted node addresses, but some of them have closed from the other end.  Perhaps in time the funds will start shifting again, but at the moment I'm wondering if my choices of nodes to connect to are the issue? 

Are you talking about things like this with people routing through you:
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.56082955
Or other transactions?

I have found that routing through my node happens in bursts.
Almost like I am 2nd or 3rd choice for a lot of people so when #1 & #2 are down I get the traffic, but then months with nothing, then transactions again.

-Dave

Is anyone using either Zap or Eclair wallets?  I have a half dozen channels open on each to various large nodes, but haven't had *any* movement for many months now.

On my old PC & phone I could see the balances shifting on a daily basis, but with the new hardware, no movement at all.

*edit* the Zap wallet is open near all the time, while the Eclair App is open on an ad-hoc basis.

Hi guys, I am new here... Where is the post where the "Lightning network" was first proposed on this forum?

I'm not sure if the previous replies already made it clear enough, but how I like to put it:
Sure, other users can open channels towards you, but then you can only receive and not send anything. They are thus only able to send funds to you and not use you as an intermediary node to send funds to another of your peers.

Your topology would look like this, with 4 connections for example:


A can't send to C, unless C has e.g. donated you some funds or bought something from you, so that the channels look like:


In this case, you'll be indeed able to forward a payment from A to C of up to 0.5BTC, because your C-channel allows it.

In conclusion, I think it's now easy to see how it's best for routing if you have many, large, and balanced (similar balances on both sides) channels.

The ability to send out money (to forward payments) is called outbound liquidity. To get it, you need to lock up own funds in channels (because the one who opens a channel of course then has the balance on their side of the channel).

There's a way that allows you to be guaranteed to get as much inbound as outbound liquidity (otherwise if you're the only one opening channels, sure, you can send, but you can't receive anything), which is something like a triangle swap or pentagon swap (https://lightningnetwork.plus/), or you can buy inbound liquidity. But for outbound, you need to lock up own funds. You need both

The first question was rephrased to "What would happen if some nodes went temporarily offline?". As for the other one, I believe I wanted to include the answer to it in some other question. I will fix that later.


Nothing. Currently, I have two channels which charge zero fees and it's been a while since I routed any transaction through them. You are more likely to end up with an unbalanced channel if you don't set any fees.

the earnings from a lightning node are in general proportional to the amount you have locked into your lightning node. meaning: the more liquidity you provide in channels, the more you can possibly earn (there are other factors, but generally speaking). and because the fees are relatively low (on lightning), you need a lot of channels with a lot of liquidty to earn a "decent" amount of sats

the biggest cost (besides hardware/electricity or hosting costs) are the onchain fees to open and close channels and atm it is pretty hard to cover them with what you earn with routing fees. the exception is the mentioned "unless you have a lot of coins"

maybe others have other experiences, but these are mine atm running my node for some months now

You removed some questions such as “What happens if some nodes go temporarily offline?” or “What discourages from running big nodes and overtaking the network?”. Would you mind explaining us what made you do so?

I have a question about this:

Why should you have a lot of coins deposited in your LN node? Aren't the users supposed to deposit and be responsible for their channel's capacity? Also, what prevents someone from allowing free transactions (not even for 1 sat per tx)? Aren't lightning clients choosing the node with the lowest fee rate?

Thanks for the awesome work.
Keep it going. We need to bring LN to the masses.
I'm in conversations (emails) with a couple of mayors of some cities in my country to try to find suitable places to do some workshops to get more people to know Bitcoin and integrate LN in their businesses...
That's what I'm contributing with and will also learn from those workshops and from this thread too.

Cheers
Dkvtx