Bitcoin Forum

I've used Electrum mobile to experiment and create a new channel with Electrum trampoline node.
I tried to send some funds to an invoice address but it is showing "in progress" for more than a week (the invoice has been long expired by now).
The funds were deducted from my channel balance ("can send" is lower) but I don't see any history of actual payments.

I think there isn't a path from Electrum trampoline to my payment target. I want to close the channel and open a new one with another node provider but I'm not sure what will
happen to the pending funds.
What is the process of recovering such funds ?
Will closing the channel send the entire balance ?

I saw that if I change the in "Lightning routing" to "Gossip" instead of "Trampoline" I actually get an error when doing new payments as it can't find a path.
Is this the preferred way for sending payments ? Seem better than having the transfer stuck

Tip: No matter how much you like Electrum as a lightweight client, it sucks at Lightning.

Have the funds been received from the other party? Have you contacted with them since then? If they are, then the "can send" is reasonably lower.

Here's something that always clears up the situation: Back up your wallet, including your lightning state. Re-install it and retry.

The problem is much harder to solve as you are using the mobile version. As far as I remember, there is no console there so we can't execute any commands that could remove that pending transaction. You could try modifying the wallet file manually, but I can't give you the exact instructions as I don't have an Android device. I would have to download an emulator.


The easiest way would probably be to close your channel. If a normal close doesn't work (it might not work unless that pending payment times out), you might need to use "Force-close".


A force-close should refund your entire channel balance minus the closing transactions fees. Force-closing is much more expensive and takes more time than a normal close, so it should be your last resort.


Trampoline routing delegates payment path calculation to an external node so that your wallet does not have to download any additional data in order to be able to construct the payment path. "Gossip" is theoretically better for your privacy, but you need to wait for your wallet to synchronise with the network every time you launch it.

It looks like 'Electrum Trampoline' node failed to find a path as well, but due to some bug, the payment didn't time out.