Crypto market looks like it was hit by a missile.

Montango?



Not that it hasn;t taken some hard damage too.

Wonder if some announcement of "Target taking Monero" or some such other nonsense is about to come out?!?

Y'all need to get a room!

Yeah.  I hope he is OK.  Maybe he just got tired of us picking on him for for his big-blockness.

You know... it's worth working this out ahead of time too, because once you have a production node with actual MONEY on it, you are building yourself constraints.  I feel much better after shutting down my BIG node with more corn tied up in it, but I also fully expect my remaining little node will be worth well into the 6 figures USD eventually... possibly even this year.

But, again, I really respect rootzoll's choices when it came to the Raspiblitz design.  I think upgrading that node from a single SSD to a 4 drive raid array (or the like) would not be hard at all since he built it to where the data drive is just that, a big dumb storage unit.

I am pretty sure I could do a full BTC chain sync in the time that my HTLCs will last, but that will not always be the case, possibly...

It is really interesting seeing all this theory become real insofar as big/small blocks, and sustaining decentralization etc.  I think it is inevitable that we see a commercialization of the bitcoin node world, but it will remain decentralized.  ETH on the other hand?  There is no way it does not end up captured by some sort of "foundation" or cabal, or steering organization etc.  And ultimately all big blockchains go there...

Seems to me that this is par for the course around MA crosses.  Usually we see headfakes.  But the market seems very schizophrenic currently.

I know he gets criticized from all corners, including the idealistic bitcoinners.  But I would be proud to be a Salvadorian with him as my President.  I think he's kicking ass, and as making a good investment in making ES the leader in CA/SA...  Shit... we might get to throw North America in there too if we keep falling apart up here.

I think the hobbyist class nodes will sometimes be run altruistically.  But I believe most of the professionally run nodes will look to make profits.  The thing is the lightning model allows for ways to make money as a node that the base model does not, really.  AND running a lightning node is a very different model to make sats than running a mining rig.

For example, a wallet provider like Acinq can change for various services with their Phoenix wallet. Channel setup fees, and then a bigger first hop fee since they will be the first node on any route.

Bank/merchant nodes are incentivized for customers to use their nodes to save them on merchant fees (VISA).  So they have like 3% baked in before they charge a fee at all.  So I could see those being cheaper.

I think there are tons of things to see play out here.  How often does a particular use case need to settle to the base chain for example?  The more it does, the more I would expect those nodes to charge.

One other thing that makes lightning different.  The "low fee" is not the only advantage it offers the buyer and seller.  Instant settlement is also a key benefit to a small retail merchant.  Like McDonalds in ES.  Seeing the terminal go green means the money has changed hands, and the deal is done.  The base layer does not have that property.

I am just putting this in faith.  Hope it works!

You rang?



This is so strange though... look at the volume on the red candle, and then the volume on the green ones?

Well my first node was built in a docker container that I made from scratch and run on a rented VPS.  But it was somewhat pricey to keep going, and his was my first project with docker, and it was a nightmare to maintain and update.  I ended up trapped it it because each time I thought about shutting it down fees were high.  Anyway I finally shut the thing down.  It was all running in a single container. Bitcoin Core and LND.  I also cobbled Ride the Lightning into it.

My other node, which I have continued to run is running ion a rPi4.  And it's running the latest Raspiblitz.  That is also running both Bitcoind and LND on the one device.  But it is much easier to maintain, and comes with pretty much all the bells and whistles.  I can reccomend it, for sure. That said, it is not as robust, and I have a good bit of value (but the other one was an order of magnitude bigger) so I have set up some backup strategies including channel backups to google drive as well as backups to a USB key.

One really clever way this node works (and I presume the others like it) is it runs the system from the SD, but keeps all the dynamic data on the USB drive.  I recently finally updated the side from ~500G to a 1T drive.  But the way the system works that is really easy to pull off...  I just booted up a live distro, and used GParted to duplicate the partition to the bigger drive... plugged it in, and it booted right up.  I think it would not be too hard to modify this distro to use a mirrored array, but of course those drives would need to be powered.

But I tentatively feel like the backup strategies for the raspiblitz are pretty effective.  If you keep your seed, and employ channel backups I think you are in decent shape.

No.  I am not proposing people do 0/0 fees.  In fact I wonder if there is a risk in that for abuse.

I have recently been reading Rene Pickhard's opinion on the idea for zero base fees for the sake of pathfinding for micro-payments.

I do 0/0 on a channel that routes tons of 1-5sat payments.  But currently that is the only one until I know that 0/0 is for sure not an attack vector.  My main reasons for running a node are self sovereignty and to help the network.  But I certainly respect that many folks are interested if profiting from it, or at least covering the costs for running it and future fees to close channels eventually.

Finally... I am in no way married to the idea of us doing a bitcointalk lightning channel ring.  Frankly I have a few too many channels for my comfort.  But on the other had I would be willing to participate in one as well... for just about any size (well probably not much bigger than 20-30mm sats, and probably not smaller than 1-2...).

And if we set up a "ring" of channels, the only argument for turning off fees is for balancing.  That said, fees duing balancing are not going to be all that bad either way.

We could see if ndalliard is up for making a little triangle...


         ndalliard
            /\
          /    \
        /        \
 Rath --------cAPS

If we set to zero fees we effectively add ALL of each other's peer channels with a zero cost single hop to them.   

I used to think it could be an opsec risk... but any motivated person could figure me out at this point.   Plus I ran this node on clearnet early on, not realizing that switching to TOR was meaningless after you do.  Anyway, this is me:

https://1ml.com/node/02a0bcc2b99673587d4a92028a2b2ce709b72c904962e2f783fd480c2c41e3dc7d

I run LND. 0.12.1 (and Bitcoin 0.21.1 as soon as I reboot)  And I am not sure if they have implemented dual funded channels yet?  I think I am one version behind the current release (13?).

I would be glad to open a channel to you though...  We could also try to balance the channel after opening it.  But I have to admit, I do not spend much time (or sats) balancing my channels.  Most of them are swept back and forth quite a bit (especially my Bitfinex channels).  Though I do notice some of my channel parters go to the trouble of keeping them balanced, and occasionally in those channels, to honor the partner I will try to shuffle sats around...

The story always an inspiration to me. Beautiful madmen executing their dream against all odds and at great cost.  And still they persist.  My own life just a shadow in comparison.

Nice.  Not shrinking.

Would also point out that this would not be the first time that Bitcoin did this exact headfake at a 200/50 dMa crossing (in either direction.).

I would love to see some volume appear.


We are currently banging into that 200dMA.

You are too good for us, Richie.

Agree.  Also when you work in MPP (assuming they really start to work) and #zerobasefees there are arguments for opening 5 2MM channels rather than 1 10MM.  More versatile, and less chance to be log jammed in one or the other direction.  I have channels are are in the double digit millions, and i think my current channel minimum to CONNECT to me is 1MM?  But I have been wondering if I should drop it to less...

That's a GREAT idea!  If each new "member" of the club just opens a channel to the last member we could make a big ring of liquidity.  Particularly if we set WO channels to zero fees.

This site sort of is based on a micro version of that idea, and I find it to be an interesting strategy.  I joined a few of the "swaps" here:

https://lightningnetwork.plus/swaps