Bitcoin Forum

So I've recently seen a video and read an article that explains how to host a lightning node on raspberry pi3.
Aside from the benefit of strengthening the ecosystem and helping the technology in general, is it financially worth doing?

Has anyone done it? Can you share some info on gains?

If you're looking to make money off it, then no. You're going to make so little(probably lower than collecting sats on faucets) that it isn't worth doing unless you just want to try it out.

Thats what i was thinking as well. Since lightning fees are usually 1-2 satoshis at best.

You can create a Lightning Network node to support the network and you cannot profit from it. The returns may be insufficient to pay the electricity bill, but you can gain enough experience and expertise regarding the technology.

Electricity cost is insignificant, around $5 per month as it would run on raspberry. However, biggest investment would be a 500GB (1TB) usb hard disk where the blockchain would be stored.

i have been hearing of hosting the lightening network from a very close friend of mine in the space and i am checking out if it is well enough to get one's attention. how can one make money out of it and also what kind of devices are needed to host the nodes. and also the electricity bills involved, is it as sophisticated as the bitcoin network itself

You need a decent sized PC (1-2 cores, 4-8 GB ram, 500+ GB of disk).
Basically you set up bitcoin node there (wait about a week to sync) and then install the lightning part.

It's not easy-peasy yet it's not rocket science.
As for electricity, it depends on what you use

Take this with a grain of salt as Xian01 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=58223)  tried this "experiment" in Jul 2018. Different values may have changed meantime

Damn this is discouraging. 15 satoshi in 2 weeks...wouldn't even be worth the cost if BTC was $1m.
But oh well, maybe it picks up when more and more ppl use lightning

Instead of running a node to earn from, you can use it for your own payments.
I haven't installed a LN node yet, light wallets work fine for me.

I'll run it just to see how it work and the process behind it. as for my own payments, i don't do many of them, so few $ a month in transactions is ok for me at this point

If you really want to help the Lightening network and the community in general, then yes go ahead with it.

However, if you are planing to make monetary gain from it, look for other investments. LN node wouldn't allow you to fetch much money because the fees in LN is very very low.

hope that makes sense!

The data from my post mentioned by Rizzrack is not really relevant; I should change that answer. Take this article (https://medium.com/@timevalueofbtc/observations-from-alexbosworths-tweet-on-fees-e9b0be1fda86) from 2018 as an example for that year.

There are currently 25 nodes owned by LNbig.com. They provide about 52,19% (497,2647581 BTC out of 952,86 BTC) of the whole network's liquidity. I can't find any data on their recent earnings, but their Twitter account shares (https://twitter.com/lnbig_com) the amount of transactions and BTC passed through their nodes in the last 24 hours from time to time. You can clearly see the surge of the transactions in the last few months. Starting from 100-800 transactions in March and going to over 4000 in May. That is a huge change.

I have tried to calculate the possible earnings using the fee formula (basefee + (amount * feerate / 1000000) and the data from this tweet (https://twitter.com/lnbig_com/status/1215737747970740224), but my results were far too off.

The 3rd March (https://twitter.com/lnbig_com/status/1234914545673625603) seems to have been the most profitable day. 161 routed transactions worth 2.24602985 BTC paid in total 219484 sat (0.00219484 BTC) in fees. At the current price of Bitcoin ($9300), it is about $20! Still, don't forget about the amount of coins locked up in all the nodes and the cost of opening transaction all channels.

The 24th January (https://twitter.com/lnbig_com/status/1220641310085914624) is even more impressive to me. 186 routed transactions worth 0.60161437 BTC paid in total 172378 sat (0.00172378 BTC) in fees. It is about $16 now.

Alex Bosworth shared (https://twitter.com/alexbosworth/status/1097889950865866752) that his node charged 0.25% per transaction and routed about $10,000/month which translates to earnings of about $25/month. He didn't say which node he was referring to, but since he is the CEO of yalls.org, we can assume that it was this one (https://1ml.com/node/03d06758583bb5154774a6eb221b1276c9e82d65bbaceca806d90e20c108f4b1c7). That is actually interesting because of the significantly smaller capital.  

Coming back to earth, you are not going to earn much if your node doesn't provide enough liquidity. However, it is also worth mentioning that multipart payments are now available in all implementations. Once more wallets start supporting them, the earnings of well-connected, small nodes might increase.

Note: Keep in mind that 952,86 BTC is the amount of the funds locked up in public channels. Private channels are... private so we don't know how many of them exactly there are and what is their balance (although that might not be the case [5.4.2] (https://arxiv.org/abs/2004.00333)). Such channels do not route any payments.

In addition to what everyone else said, having had several nodes up over the last 18 months or so, unless you have the time to devote to it, run a node in a box.
You are not going to make any BTC, but from a learning point you can start with either mynodebtc or raspiblitz and go from there.
They work out of the box and you can tinker. Once you are confident you can start yours from scratch.

-Dave

remember the dream. remember the promise of LN being the route to 'sub penny tx's
well onchain fees are ~$2 each due to dev stfling onchain progress
and a $30 LN is 0.1% - 0.25% = 3-9cents
so not even sub pennies.

remember in 2015 when people were saying their $30  was costing them 10cents onchain and things needed to be done to get it under a penny.
remember the promise of onchain discounts

seems the commercial businesses operating LN and have been pushing for LN for many years now. are already trying hard to get profits. all at the cost of user experience of a financial system that was suppose to break away from the corruption of the commercial fiat system

but hey.
many many people know of all the bugs of LN and are actually making more money by abusing the flaws than they do from operating an ethical business of economic benefit.

the unbanked countries of the world that earn 3-9 cents an hour are already laughing that LN is not fit for them.
long gone has the perception that bitcoin. is for the unbanked. because the commercial businesses stifled bitcoin to promote their LN network as the system for the unbanked. and already before LN is even out of beta testing LN is failing to fulfil that promise

That promise is still true. Users are free to use other channels. Both LNbig.com and Alex's node charge outrageously higher fees than other Lightning Network nodes. Most people would argue that they provide a lot of large channels and paths for payment routing. While the latter is true, the former will become less and less relevant over time because of multipart payments.


You're right. The LN fees for larger payments would be nowhere near subsatoshi level if all nodes charged 0.1%-0.25% per transaction. Longer routes would be completely cost-inefficient. I believe that there will be plenty of smaller nodes offering lower fees. Currently, most LN nodes route payments at the default settings. Here are some of my calculations. Assumptions: BTC price - $10.000, routed payment value - $30.

LN fee = basefee + (amount * feerate / 1000000)

Default settings:

https://i.imgur.com/a7ehBXo.png

Currently known LNbig.com settings (https://twitter.com/lnbig_com/status/1215737747970740224):

https://i.imgur.com/e3T4lHL.png

In my opinion, 1200 sat for a $30 transaction is way too much. If such payment was divided into 4 equal parts and sent through 4 different paths consisting of "default nodes" then 1 hop would cost:

https://i.imgur.com/cU8oz0Q.png

That is definitely more cost-efficient and I believe that's what is going to happen in the future to most payments. Some parts of the payments, will be sent through cheaper routes.


What bugs exactly?

How much money does it cost you to create that node?
Can I use my PC (CORE i7) to do this, or do I need a specialized hardware device?

I read on one of the forums that I can make returns from $ 10 to $ 30 a month?
If this is true and I can manage 3 nodes without having to sit in front of the computer for a long time, then perhaps it is considered a good source of income in some countries where there is electricity and equipment.

here is the thing
the purpose of LN might well seem to be presented as offering fee's of 1 sat per channel hop
but multiple parties involved to multihop. multiply that

so although one node may only make 1 sat per swap.. reality is the distance from the sender to the receiver is like 10 hops away. so the fee for the sender is 10sat

..
one group of nodes are already setting themselves up as multiple points along a route
A<>B<>C<>D<>E<>F<>G<>H<>I<>J<>K
imagine it like this A wants to pay K
b will only get 1 sat for his part. C only 1 sat, D only 1 sat and so on
but it cost A 10 sat

now imagine if B D F H J all belonged to one person..
suddenly for that one payment from A-K that one person has earned 5 sats

..
next generation of game theory is that the 10 hop route costs A 10sat.. but the guy owning BDFHJ
then offers a route of
A-B-J-k for only 9 sat

so A prefers paying 9 instead of 10. and now the guy owning many chanels gets 9 sat instead of just 5
and making the independant nodes CEGI never get used and end up giving up using LN
..
but that was game theory back when the promotional media dribble was promising low sat fee's
with sat fees at 0.1% and most route being multiple hops. that total fee end to end is more than 0.1%
and if channel factories are clever enough they can get multiple 0.1% as shown above

have a nice day
and as for the bugs and flaws. i dont like to teach scammers how to scam. if your not smart enough to work it out you dont deserve it.
the LN devs themselves know of many flaws and yep they themselves have 'lost' funds from it
i say 'lost' because coins do not disapear off the blockchain. but silly bugs and bad rules make silly people give away their LN millsat funds to others. so that when a real bitcoin transaction occurs onchain its not in their favour. due to their silliness. they signed off on a broadcast transaction thats not in their favour due to the silliness of the LN contracts offchain(facepalm)

LN is not a safe network and not a network that should even be considered on the same neighbourhood as bitcoin. it does not deserve the fame/trust that the bitcoin network has

POS has its own problems. It's a perpetual motion machine , https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perpetual_motion


An open source software/technology designed for banks? Banks will buy Bitcoin, and stake it to provide liquidity, and efficiency in Lightning?

Read what is a Perpetual Motion Machine. That's POS. Security without burning energy can't be an assurance that POS is secure.

POS coins are actually what banks/exchanges like, because they can stake users' coins/have political leverage on the network without cost. 8)


::)

If you have 497 btc, you can earn about 0.054 btc (~$490) per day on celsius (https://celsius.network/about-us/) lending your coin, and I would assume somewhat similar amounts on other lending sites.

It does not look like there is currently enough volume to make a lot running a LN node. The benefit to doing so now is to learn how to run a LN node, and work out the kinks if you want to run a node when volume is higher in the future.

the commercial bank game for LN is to dis-incentivise people from making their own profit
the commercial bank game is for people to deposit/lock their funds into their custody
the commercial bank game is to make it appear faster and cheaper and more reliable to use the banks services

certain devs are attached to companies that have over $100m in investment from the big banking corps and those investors want their returns.(banks dont just give out charity. they always want returns)

if you think that you can be independent and make profit on LN you are in for a shock
there is already alot of chatter that the big guys will attach themselves to you via channels. and then attach themselves to others so that a 10 hop route via independants is more expensive than their 2 hop route through the big guys 'factory channels' because they are the shortcut bypass, while making the normally 5 hop route appear to be 10 hops by being inbetween each

in the end making the independants give in and just put their funds into the big guys custody in full and then be offered temporary non broadcast 'factory' channels that can be consolidated/reconciled and aggregated without having to open and close onchain.
basically keep handing out paper promissory notes(bank notes) so people dont want/need/have/care to hold gold anymore

Well you can run it on your PC assuming you can make it run consistently without downtime. It's not that choosy in terms of hardware though,  besides ample amounts of memory and bandwidth. You can use a Raspberry Pi 3.


I don't think so. You're probably going to be lucky to even breakeven with the electricity, bandwidth, and hardware costs lol.

It's simply for convinience and efficiency, like mining. It is still the choice of the user, IF they want to "play the game".

If HODLers want to entrust their coins to a trusted third party to "stake" their Bitcoin for them, or run their own Lightning node, you can't make, or not make them.

wind fury continues to advertise LN.. yet also advertises his lack of first hand experience using it. or knowing its flaws or the bugs or its methods to manipulate things

if people put coins in. those other channels and routes around that person can actually manipulate the user to get him to lose his value. not have funds on their side to use themselves. or just be froze out of being a route

maybe it would have been best to spend your time actually learning about LN instead of just repeating the old promotional material handed to you by others. its getting too obvious now

...

anyway
without any bugs, flaws, its easy to abuse a LN user
find one with say X units of measure
ask the crowd of HYIP/pyramid scammers to join that user and send you X coins
then ask them to recruit their own dummies to join and send coins to them

you<0:X>user<X:X>scammerA
becomes
you<X:0>user<XX:0>scammerA

you leave with X extra and let the pyramid scammers play

scammerB<X:X>user<XX:0>scammerA
scammerC<X:X>/
becomes
scammerB<0:XX>user<:XX>scammerA
scammerC<0:XX>/
scammerA leaves with XX

'users' has to continually add more funds to open more channels
while people are exiting with more funds then they started with

..
and thats just one way to:
profit from LN
freeze out 'user' from doing any transactions for himself..
freeze out 'user' from being a route for other ethical users..
make him give up because he cant just keep funding new channels

yes in the end one scammer wont get returns. but the initial scammers did. and while it was lasting the user was losing funds and getting frustrated that he was getting abused by others.

again. no bugs. no flaws. no hacks.. just using LN features as intended

(there are many other ways to abuse LN and gain funds. but i just shown the weakest one that anyone with common sense could have figured out themselves. so no harm mentioning this one)

Some months ago a friend of mine invested into this lightning node and hoped for a financial improvement but wasn't what he thought about lightning node investment. I won't encourage anyone who sole aim is to invest for financial freedom, it's better to choose other investment platforms for financial freedom than lighting node.

You continue to spread fud, disinformation, and continue gaslighting the community. PLUS adds long techno-babble that developers themselves find laughable.

You say running Lightning nodes are only for banks? Yet the facts prove you wrong, https://bitcoinvisuals.com/ln-nodes

More than 5,000 nodes.

I don't think there is evidence to support this statement.

Banks make money by accepting deposits, paying interest on said deposits at a rate less than the rate they lend out the deposits. As I have noted above, the amount LN node operators are earning is far less than deposit rates, and as such, a bank would not be profitable running a LN node.

LN node operators will likely benefit from economies of scale over the long run, and larger operators will likely earn more than smaller operators, however the barriers to entry will still be low.

I also don't think there is any basis for saying that becoming a LN node operator will require any kind of license. This will not be true as long as getting an on-chain transaction confirmed does not require a license. If a group of LN node operators (stupidly) tried to exclude anyone without a license, it would be trivial for other people to create their own LN network with other nodes that does not require a license.

There's no "I don't think", because there IS NO REASON that Lightning was designed for banks in mind. Laughable. The trolls believe they can gaslight everyone by simply repeating false statements.

I believe section 230 (https://www.eff.org/issues/cda230) of the communications decency act would protect any LN node operator. This however is not legal advice, and should not be relied upon as such.

LN node operators are also not selling coin to third parties by virtue of their operating a LN node.

Tell the troll, there are more than 5,000 nodes running in LN, the network is growing, channels are multiplying, network capacity is 976.61 coins total, more than during 2019, not one FBI agent kicking a door. 8)

Hahaha. OR if FBI agents get sore feet by kicking down thousands of doors one-by-one just to "kill" the Lightning  Network, https://1ml.com/statistics

Do FBI agents fly to other countries? The troll isn't good in disinformation/gaslighting.

The lightning node is the fastest one out there and therefore if you are thinking of doing it you should actually consider these two things :

1. Fee is very less
2. Applications are actually more in day to day routine.

Even though the fee of the lightning network is very low , for example if a cafe runs and accepts Bitcoins , they would use the lightning network , so even if 100 customers come , you will maximum earn very little. It can be taken as a means to help Bitcoins and make them more acceptable to general public.

But then again Lightning network is not considered as safe as the Blockchain .


https://medium.com/suredbits/lightning-101-why-is-the-lightning-network-secure-cc1093e392d4 (https://medium.com/suredbits/lightning-101-why-is-the-lightning-network-secure-cc1093e392d4)
^ This actually contains all the information about the lightning network if you want to know .

Yes i see your point. Thats the paradox of the situation i guess. Such low fees discourage people from hosting and expanding it

In theory, Lightning transactions can/might, not will, become slightly more expensive than altcoins because node operators are "staking" working capital in payment channels. I believe most of them should expect some returns by setting fees slightly higher, and the more of their capital they're staking, of course, the more they expect to see returns. No one will lock working capital in payment channels altruistically forever in my opinion.

Plus there's some level of specialization/work in balancing channels.

I see you guys have a theoretical discussion, and i'm not really interested in trying to actively promote nor discourage the lightning network... I'm merely interested in testing out this stuff... And i don't mind sharing my stats:


I don't quite remember when i started running a lightning node, but it was before there were any good explorers available... Defenately > 1 year ago.
So, less than 100 sat/year...

You do need to run a full node, and c-lightning on top... So you need a semi-decent server for this, defenately not worth your time or energy bill... But if you run a node anyways, i don't see a problem with running a lightning node on top of it aswell...

ETFbitcoin: earn more by charging more..(facepalm)

yea seems very elementary school economics.. but

if other routes are charging less. people just wont use your route. meaning you end up getting less/nothing
because your just too expensive

imagine A wants to pay J 10 hops away

all a person has to do is strategically place himself with just a couple channels
EG                 5
          /-------Z-------\  
      A-B-C-D-E-F-G-H-I-J
         1  1 1  1 1 1  1 1
now it doesnt matter if independant node D wants to try to earn more by upping his fee above 1
now it doesnt matter if D wants to just earn loyalty and reputation by downing to 0 fee

A will still prefer 5sat A-B-Z-I-J .. compared to 7-8-9 sat abcdefghij(depending on what D charges)

oh and one more trick
Z does not actually have to be another channel linked between B and I
by owning both B and I the user can just manage B and I and just move funds from I<>J's promisory contract as soon as A moves funds from A<>B
 
yep Z is not a real channel just a person charging 5sat to aggregate A<>B I<>J funds


imagine it like this

A    K               I
  \  /                 \  
   B        E    G    J
  /  \     /  \  / \  /
L    C--D   F    H

B doesnt need a direct channel B to I. he can aggregate separetly with no routing
he can also up the fee through B-C to make it less appealing to go BCDFGHJ
another trick is jsut to fake that B-C has no spare fund capacity. thus just rule out a BCDEFGHJ route

Uh-oh, it's time for franky1 to break out the ascii-technobabble, for those occasions when his standard nonsense just won't quite cut it. 

He'd be dangerous if he had the slightest clue what he was talking about.    :D

sorry had to correct that. (LN doesnt use 8 decimal units, thus not bitcoin)
you do know that while a route is being set up the HTLC within LN which are temporary cater for the balance at that time and organise it so that if 2 routes are trying to pass at any one time they both cant double spend.. these temporary contracts are millisat measures.
the actual payment complete is a separate contract process. which is the 'possible broadcast' one



yep many routes might already have used their millisat contracts/balance on other routes and therefore not able to cater to new routes.
many might want to pay regularly but those on the routes time out. and thus not available next time
this is more reason to not put in huge hoards for months. because it may just end up being locked for months but no way to spend.
all leading to the only possible 'guarantee' of service is to stake funds into 'factories' AKA bank2.0

where as BTC which is the whole point of it. was to have CHEAP value transfer without middlemen. without resistance or politics making financial decisions of who can and cant pay another person.

plus the other flaws that can just steal funds from their channel partners.

LN does not deserve the same credit or recognition or some trust bases as BTC. not only due to the flaws but because it doesnt even offer the same security nor the same redundancy nor the same protections

im all for people developing other stuff. but trying to fool people into saying that it IS btc. even though there is no blockchain and its not even measured in 8 decimal units of account. just bewilders me how either naive some people are that havent even used it yet but advertise it soo much (windfury is obvious) and those that might know the secret corporate 'banking' agenda. who just troll and kiss ass to certain people thinking that they can continue duping people into promises of riches and unlimited unhindered utility.

it just amazes me how callous people can be

For me, it was clear from the start that running a lightning node would make little to no money, so i left all fee-related settings completely default...


Sure, i could probably make a "lot" more if i'd open extra channels and raised the fees, but i'm not really interested in this... I mean, even if this settings would multiply my income by 100, i'd still only make enough to buy 1 or 2 beers a year... Defenately not worth my troubles

doomad wouldnt be dangerous if he wasnt jsut kissing certain devs ass to promote other networks

even now doomad and his pals still want to promote LN as being bitcoin and getting angry when smarter people then him point out its a different network with different units of measure and non of the same securities of peer review and decentralised auditing

even the code/comments in LN shows that LN payments are made in millisat IOU's where at a later date they are settled for bitcoins in a separate contract after 'rounding'

https://github.com/lightningnetwork/lnd/blob/a8f077a8417011e2b816002ba4c4f777fb511999/lnwire/msat.go#L19

as for trying to be double down ass kisser trying to make LN seem as secure as bitcoin.
doomad really is trying to hard to oversell LN even when people are asking for genuine answers to genuine questions. doomad just wants to be a spiteful man-child getting angry at anyone thats not promoting LN favourably
so heres the genuine truth
unless your a big established business thats going to offer alot of services and and have enough reserves to set up strategicaly placed channels across the LN network. you got no chance of making profit on LN

even now some of the key services are only buddying up with key gates(factory nodes) to lessen how many channels the service needs to open and just be partners with high collateral businesses.
so if you think random hobby guy has a chance to get 1 hop away from a popular service to become a useful path to the service for routing.. sorry not gonna happen

its like amazon. they wont set up a channel with dallas wives book club node. or mary down the street node. they will set up a channel with large payment gateways. like banks. and let the banks take the pressure off amazon

I know that reading comprehension has always been a struggle to you, as your overactive imagination is filling in the blanks faster than you can absorb any actual facts from what you are attempting to parse, but I have always taken the stance that LN is a different security model than the one people may be accustomed to.  

Just because I've corrected some of your gross exaggerations and outright lies, does not mean I'm claiming LN is as secure as on-chain.  I have stated it's likely more secure than third party exchanges.  Perhaps you're perfectly content for users to continue to face losses from incompetent fully-custodial exchanges and never put the same effort into decrying those as much as you do LN, which is not fully-custodial and gives more power to users over their funds.

I know I'm wasting my time trying to explain it to you, though.  You believe the absurd notion that LN = Banks.




Is that what you think the point of Lightning is?  Making profit?  It's no wonder you're so confused.  As usual, your premise is flawed.  The point is faster transactions and reduced fees if you don't require as much security for transactions of smaller sums.



Time will tell.  Some of us are satisfied to wait and see how it evolves over time.  You seem to prefer imagining the worst-case-scenario and then pretending that it's the only conceivable outcome.  I'm sorry this experiment is so offensive to your delicate sensibilities.

There is NOTHING in that code/comment that said, or describe that transactions in Lightning are made of IOUs. Stop gaslighting.

Newbies, the coins locked in LN channels are actual coins sent in a special multisig address that allows both its participants to send coins between them back-and-forth off-the-chain, that have not yet been confirmed on-chain.

You can think of it as like an organized mem-pool.

the HTLC payments are measured in 12 decimals as a contract promise to later settle in 8 decimals
the settlement happens separately and later on

know the difference between the 12 decimal promise and the 8 decimal settlement.
i know 'gaslighting' is your new buzzword but you have no clue
maybe learn more about LN before you ass kiss it

really take the time to understand the key points of this statement
"Within the network, all HTLC payments are denominated in milli-satoshis. As milli-satoshis aren't deliverable on the native blockchain, before settling to broadcasting, the values are rounded down to the nearest satoshi."

ill give you a hint. the HTLC are not settling bitcoins. they are making payments using a denomination not recognised by bitcoin. in a format of a promise of what value the other party should get.
but even when settling they still have to negotiate how to round it up or down.

meaning its not a settled payment. its a promise to pay or a intent to pay in contract form at a later date
which is the bases of what an IOU is

as for doomad pretending he corrects me
i know you love calling anything an experiment so that you can claim that when it fails its ok that it fails because it was only an experiment you and a certain few done this with bitcoin too.
you dont care about bitcoins success/longevity.

also repeating "it must be wrong because franky1 said it" is not a correction. neither is "i guess you didnt learn". neither is then saying in the next topic you corrected me . and then in a third topic saying you already said you corrected me. any actual kind of proof of correction in the first or second place

we already know that you love the idea of factory and watchtowers which is exactly the banking model
even the devs of LN have worked out that the multihop model doesnt work well but the hub and spoke bank model does.
this hub and spoke thing was mentioned years ago and has been actually already running now.. its not some future thing to not be concerned about now. its actually happening now so should concern people

so while you pretend to imply to people that they can make guaranteed fast payments and make casual income on a hop model. no harm no foul no negative experiences

the devs and many others are calling out the hard facts that LN is ALREADY playing into the hub and spoke model. and many are having negative experiences on the hop model

i know you want to convert people away from bitcoin and jump into and lock up funds to then play in LN. and say everything is fine and working and guaranteed and cheaper than bitcoin. and that the hub/spoke model is something for distant future to not be concerned about now
yep i called out your games before. in many topics over many years
the real hard truth is the hub/spoke model is playing out now.

so im sorry to keep ruining your LN admiration promotions. but hey. people want to know these things.
and yes when this topic is asking about making passive income. then ill answer them about making passive income
so you can cry all you like about thinking that its me that thinks "the only point of LN is about making profit"
i guess you missed what this topic was all about
and i guess you missed my point that normal people wont make profit

continue crying all you like. but atleast dont sound like an alt network lover while you try to convince people to step away from bitcoin, knowing that they will only get headaches and problems unless they vault up with a hub. (your secret agenda and hope)

oh and one last thing
LN is not limited to being a bitcoin only feature. many altcoins can use it.
so atleast be honest and stop promoting it as if its bitcoin but faster and cheaper
its nothing like bitcoin. nor limited to bitcoin
heck there are even some tether (digital fiat) currencies that will use LN

I call it experimental because I'm fond of a little thing called REALITY.  You know, that word I keep using all the time?  The thing you have literally no concept of?

If you think any of this is the finished product, you're even more fucking delusional than I ever gave you credit for.  Being a realist doesn't mean I don't care about Bitcoin's longevity.  It means I have to recognise that certain compromises are inevitable and it's better that the compromises are made off-chain.  This is an infinitely more sensible approach than your desired method, which is to make all the compromises on-chain and jeopardise the longevity of Bitcoin.  You utter imbecile.

But please keep posting.  Every single post you make is yet another nail in the coffin.  And inside that coffin is your total accumulated understanding of how this stuff works.  Lifeless and unaware.  You continue to serve as a prime example of how to never grow as a person, or learn anything, or even feign basic comprehension of a fairly simple concept.  It's as though time stopped for you about 3 years ago and you think that you can hold on to that moment in time forever.  So anything that contradicts your narrow view must be wrong and evil somehow.  Enjoy living in your make-believe bubble, but sadly we can't join you.  Go play by yourself.  Or just get the mental breakdown out of the way already, have some therapy and finally learn to function like a normal, reasonable human being.  Your call.

an experiment is not about a product its a test to find out a result
so if the test is to know if there is a emethod to decentrally pass 'value' then it pased that experiment a decade ago

a product is something that is commonly used daily it doesnt have to be a perfectly refined product. but if it has a purpose and people are using it. then its no longer an experiment
its at the production stage not the experimental stage

but i do find it funny how you dont want people to think of bitcoin as a functioning product commonly used by thousands of people. how your trying to keep pushing the narrative that bitcoin will fail and other networks are better.
really funny but not as subtle as you try to think your making it

im guessing, in YOUR reality. if you ever had kids you would class them as just an experiment until they reached adulthood
where if they died in childhood you would say 'oh well its just an experiment, lets try something else'
you would not care or want to take responsibility. because to you they are just an experiment

Nothing of that long post proves that Lightning is a network of IOUs. No one takes your coins, and issues an IOU in Lightning. The coins locked on payment channels are ACTUAL BITCOIN UTXOs, that have yet to be confirmed on-chain.

Just because Bitcoin functions well and serves a purpose, doesn't mean you get to draw a line in the sand, say it's finished and then spend the rest of time decrying all future development.  You're welcome to do it, but no one is going to take you seriously.  

You can also make up the narrative that I'm "pushing the narrative that Bitcoin will fail", because I know fully well that you lack the credibity for anyone to believe you.

LN is happening, people are going to play with it.  It will evolve and grow.  You can't stop it with fear mongering.




Please stop projecting your traumatic childhood onto everyone and everything else.  

In my opinion it is not feasible to make money with a lightning network node, many costs must be incurred. Like electricity costs
and device maintenance, because it requires a device with a fairly high specification, if you only experiment and gain experience,
you can try doing it. I suggest trading if it's the goal to be able to make money.

please drop an article or link to a documentary or video where one can learn how to host the network as i am also very interested. A friend of mine ones told me about the hosting of the lightening network but he was yet to get clearly the tehnicalities involved. any information shared here will be of great assistance.

HTLC are not actual bitcoin UTXO

the bitcoin UTXO is the deposit into a joint account
then HTLC(banknotes) in 12 decimals are created separetly and played around with
then when settling those HTLC are rounded up or down and then a bitcoin transaction is signed to then be broadcastable

try reading the code and comments from the devs making LN
i posted it twice no in the last could posts i made in this topic i even linked it.
maybe try to read it instead of just being ignorant and just saying techno-babble as your way of not even bothering to read it

here incase you missed it
"Within the network, all HTLC payments are denominated in milli-satoshis. As milli-satoshis aren't deliverable on the native blockchain, before settling to broadcasting, the values are rounded down to the nearest satoshi."

i colour coded the 3 points you seem to keep ignoring
i dare you. i truly dare you to actually learn LN to come back and know fully what these 3 coloured parts mean
it will surprise you
learn the "open" and "close" channel processes 
and when and where the rounding occurs
and the difference between the LN HTLC vs locktime contract type

bitcoins purpose is irreversible uneditable undeletable transfer of value.
LN does dont offer this same protection. nor are the HTLC 8 decimal

it might take you less time if you realise the simple fact that HTLC are not 8 decimal
ill say it a final time because i dont want to waste more posts reminding you
HTLC's are not 8 decimal
i hope you finally realise this FACT

oh and LN is not limited to bitcoin. people can also lock litecoin. and then play with LN so even your premiss that LN payments include a BITCOIN UTXO shows how little you know
good luck with your learning.
seems after a couple years you still have a long way to go

You can colour code it any way you like, that still doesn't make it equivalent to an IOU or a banknote.  If you think it does, then, as usual, if you are making the claim, the onus is on YOU to prove it.  The evidence you have provided does not convince me that HTLCs are in any way similar to IOUs.  You are merely contorting facts to suit your misleading claims.

franky, I explain one thing, and you make a deliberate effort to make a long confusing post about, I don't know. DISINFORMATION.

If you're a pro-Bitcoin-secret-agent sent by gmaxwell to make the anti-Bitcoin trolls look bad, then you are doing a job well done. Thank you.