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Title: What are the positives and negatives of leaving a lightning payment channel open Post by: jiamijiang on April 11, 2021, 03:07:47 AM What are the positives and negatives of leaving a lightning payment channel open? How am I contributing to the lightning network and what are the risks if any?
Title: Re: What are the positives and negatives of leaving a lightning payment channel open Post by: jackg on April 11, 2021, 03:11:38 AM If your node remains online then you're contributing your channel funds to help route other people's transactions. The more channels you have open the more routing you can do also.
If you're not keeping your node onoine then you're going to have to start it at least as often as the timelock runs out for the channel (you can verify this number from its stats). If you don't put your channel back online before this time is up, there's a chance the other party can claim your funds afaik. Title: Re: What are the positives and negatives of leaving a lightning payment channel open Post by: nc50lc on April 11, 2021, 03:27:50 AM What are the positives and negatives of leaving a lightning payment channel open? How am I contributing to the lightning network and what are the risks if any? In Electrum? I think keeping it open will not contribute to the network since Electrum-made channels (trampoline or not) don't route payments (CMIIAW).Anyhow, it's best to keep your channel(s) open in case you need to send more lightning funds, and also if you still don't need the funds onchain. Title: Re: What are the positives and negatives of leaving a lightning payment channel open Post by: Rath_ on April 11, 2021, 07:19:14 AM If you're not keeping your node onoine then you're going to have to start it at least as often as the timelock runs out for the channel (you can verify this number from its stats). If you don't put your channel back online before this time is up, there's a chance the other party can claim your funds afaik. The other party cannot claim your funds just like that. There is a chance that the other party might broadcast an old commitment transaction. Once that happens then you have to come back online before the timelock expires and broadcast a penalty transaction. If you trust the node you are connected to then you can stay offline for as much as you want. You can also set up a watchtower which can automatically publish a penalty transaction for you. Electrum founds channels with a to_self_delay of 1024 blocks (~1 week), so this means that you can be safely offline for slightly less than a week. As for now, this value can be only changed directly in the code (https://github.com/spesmilo/electrum/blob/d62a4833e596831b322bdc55d954d35dc4f273ff/electrum/lnpeer.py#L545). If your node remains online then you're contributing your channel funds to help route other people's transactions. The more channels you have open the more routing you can do also. As nc50lc has said, channels founded using Electrum cannot be used for payment routing. All channels are private so they are not advertised across the network and cannot be found using Lightning explorers (ex. 1ml.com (http://https:1ml.com)). Title: Re: What are the positives and negatives of leaving a lightning payment channel open Post by: PrimeNumber7 on April 11, 2021, 11:38:14 PM What are the positives and negatives of leaving a lightning payment channel open? How am I contributing to the lightning network and what are the risks if any? In Electrum? I think keeping it open will not contribute to the network since Electrum-made channels (trampoline or not) don't route payments (CMIIAW).As nc50lc has said, channels founded using Electrum cannot be used for payment routing. All channels are private so they are not advertised across the network and cannot be found using Lightning explorers (ex. 1ml.com (http://https:1ml.com)). I think future versions of electrum should support the ability to route payments via LN. Without this feature, I can see a lot of LN nodes closing LN channels with electrum users if they do not use many transactions, especially if the electrum user has sent payments to/via the LN channel, meaning the LN node is tying up capacity. |