The Lightning Network FAQ

[Wind_FURY]

Who among the consistent Lightning users here have been running a node, specialized specifically for routing transactions/providing liquidity, how long have you been running it, and what's the averge cost of running it?

I've been running one (C-lightning) for almost two years now, and it costs me barely nothing : just setup on top of my old computer which already ran core.
So it costed me a low end computer which I had for free (I'm in the process of changing it, but I'm not that well connected after all) and electricity cost for an idle computer.

The bigger cost is the coins to open channels.

Practically speaking, how long, do you believe, can you stake your Bitcoins, and altruistically continue running your node, rebalance channels, to provide liquidity without incentives?

[darosior]

Who among the consistent Lightning users here have been running a node, specialized specifically for routing transactions/providing liquidity, how long have you been running it, and what's the averge cost of running it?

I've been running one (C-lightning) for almost two years now, and it costs me barely nothing : just setup on top of my old computer which already ran core.
So it costed me a low end computer which I had for free (I'm in the process of changing it, but I'm not that well connected after all) and electricity cost for an idle computer.

The bigger cost is the coins to open channels.

Practically speaking, how long, do you believe, can you stake your Bitcoins, and altruistically continue running your node, rebalance channels, to provide liquidity without incentives?

I've been doing this for more than a year now, with rebalance fees at my charge. I've stopped doing this by closing channels to peers charging too much fees and connecting to peers charging little fees (which I found thanks to a little plugin I wrote). This way, not only I'm no longer altruistically running my node (since I make use of rebalanced channels) but I can also earn some (milli)sats if I happen to charge less fees than my neighbors.

[DaveF]

My node just started throwing hardware errors.
I am in the process of closing all the channels that I had open. I know there were some people here who I had some open with, if there are any problems let me know, should just close gracefully but if they don't I'm going to force close them.

-Dave

[Wind_FURY]

Who among the consistent Lightning users here have been running a node, specialized specifically for routing transactions/providing liquidity, how long have you been running it, and what's the averge cost of running it?

I've been running one (C-lightning) for almost two years now, and it costs me barely nothing : just setup on top of my old computer which already ran core.
So it costed me a low end computer which I had for free (I'm in the process of changing it, but I'm not that well connected after all) and electricity cost for an idle computer.

The bigger cost is the coins to open channels.

Practically speaking, how long, do you believe, can you stake your Bitcoins, and altruistically continue running your node, rebalance channels, to provide liquidity without incentives?

I've been doing this for more than a year now, with rebalance fees at my charge. I've stopped doing this by closing channels to peers charging too much fees and connecting to peers charging little fees (which I found thanks to a little plugin I wrote). This way, not only I'm no longer altruistically running my node (since I make use of rebalanced channels) but I can also earn some (milli)sats if I happen to charge less fees than my neighbors.

The coins you collect from routing fees can support the expenses/costs of running your Lightning node? Hard to believe, but that's good.

Plus do you think that Lightning's fee-structure now is in its final form? It won't increase depending on demand? Because it's very hard to assume that it won't if the economic cost is scarce.

[darosior]

--

The coins you collect from routing fees can support the expenses/costs of running your Lightning node? Hard to believe, but that's good.
[/quote]

It's not hard to believe that the fees you collect from forwarding can support your paying fees. You just need to not connect to 4999ppm fees charging peers...
Moreover I've no infrastructure cost. And not doing altruistically takes the service or instant non-censurable payments into account .

Plus do you think that Lightning's fee-structure now is in its final form? It won't increase depending on demand? Because it's very hard to assume that it won't if the economic cost is scarce.

I'm not sure so.. I don't know.

[Wind_FURY]

--

The coins you collect from routing fees can support the expenses/costs of running your Lightning node? Hard to believe, but that's good.

It's not hard to believe that the fees you collect from forwarding can support your paying fees. You just need to not connect to 4999ppm fees charging peers...
Moreover I've no infrastructure cost. And not doing altruistically takes the service or instant non-censurable payments into account .

Plus do you think that Lightning's fee-structure now is in its final form? It won't increase depending on demand? Because it's very hard to assume that it won't if the economic cost is scarce.

I'm not sure so.. I don't know.

Visualize this. Bitcoin's adoption rate reached 10% of the world's population, the Lightning Network is the standard for instant payment, demand for inbound capacity has increased exponentially, economic cost for it is a scarce/valuable asset.

[TheBeardedBaby]

I haven't seen any info about the announcing of Strike by Zap here on the forum except in the WO thread. Tried searching for it but 0 interest. It's a good new for the whole LN and Bitcoin in general so why not share the info here. I'll just quote the post from WO thread

an application that allows you to make Lightning payments with your bank account or debit card. Using Strike requires the following: a debit card or bank account. That’s it; no wallet, no node, no channels, no swaps, no liquidity management, no anything.

https://medium.com/@JimmyMow/announcing-strike-by-zap-4f578c7c8984

Bank accounts and debit cards can now speak to nodes all over the world, and nodes all over the world can now speak to bank accounts and debit cards. The possibilities are endless and the sky is the limit.

pretty good




edit https://twitter.com/JackMallers/status/1222941238279708674?s=20

[darosior]

--

The coins you collect from routing fees can support the expenses/costs of running your Lightning node? Hard to believe, but that's good.

It's not hard to believe that the fees you collect from forwarding can support your paying fees. You just need to not connect to 4999ppm fees charging peers...
Moreover I've no infrastructure cost. And not doing altruistically takes the service or instant non-censurable payments into account .

Plus do you think that Lightning's fee-structure now is in its final form? It won't increase depending on demand? Because it's very hard to assume that it won't if the economic cost is scarce.

I'm not sure so.. I don't know.

Visualize this. Bitcoin's adoption rate reached 10% of the world's population, the Lightning Network is the standard for instant payment, demand for inbound capacity has increased exponentially, economic cost for it is a scarce/valuable asset.

Ok, I think (/hope?) that at some point the demand will switch from inbound to outbound capacity.

[fillippone]

I haven't seen any info about the announcing of Strike by Zap here on the forum except in the WO thread. Tried searching for it but 0 interest. It's a good new for the whole LN and Bitcoin in general so why not share the info here. I'll just quote the post from WO thread

WO thread is a greatly undervalued source of information.
Having said that, I posted something in the Italian section about this, and in my very humble opinion is a big step ahead because I recall, when I used to do my monthly commentaries, to write LN needed a decent user experience to be in real competition to Credit Cards (LN main competitor, i think).
This is a big step in the right direction: flawless execution, limited/no existent hassle.

[DaveF]

I haven't seen any info about the announcing of Strike by Zap here on the forum except in the WO thread. Tried searching for it but 0 interest. It's a good new for the whole LN and Bitcoin in general so why not share the info here. I'll just quote the post from WO thread

an application that allows you to make Lightning payments with your bank account or debit card. Using Strike requires the following: a debit card or bank account. That’s it; no wallet, no node, no channels, no swaps, no liquidity management, no anything.

https://medium.com/@JimmyMow/announcing-strike-by-zap-4f578c7c8984

---SNIP---

Yeah, I saw that yesterday and wanted to play with it a bit before commenting on it. Going to see if I can get a few minutes this weekend and take a look.
I hope it's quick and simple, I have read nothing about setting it up. Not because I fear difficult, but I just don't have time.

Side note, my node is back up and stable for a few days now so if you were one of the people I closed a channel to feel free to open it again I think it should be good for a while now.

-Dave

[TheBeardedBaby]

@ DaveF You messed up the quotes, man. I just didn't want to spam the thread with discussions here so that's why I created a new thread for Strike here so you are welcome to move the discussion there.

If you guys think that it's time for a LN subsection, give your support here .

[DaveF]

With the acknowledgement that I should probably ask this on github:
Is there a way in lnd to set the option of max channel size that can be opened based on the node that is opening it?

i.e.:
You are an unknown node you can open up to 100k sat
I know you and have your node listed you can open up to 1M sat


Thanks,
Dave

[Rath_]

Is there a way in lnd to set the option of max channel size that can be opened based on the node that is opening it?

As far as I know, the answer is no. You can only change the minimum size of any incoming channel in the config file (minchansize). It applies to every node; you can't whitelist them.

[DaveF]

Is there a way in lnd to set the option of max channel size that can be opened based on the node that is opening it?

As far as I know, the answer is no. You can only change the minimum size of any incoming channel in the config file (minchansize). It applies to every node; you can't whitelist them.

Well that is annoying. I can't believe that nobody thought someone might not want to have some unknown node open a massive channel to them.
Seems to be something that should be looked at. Unless I am missing something it does seem to open up the possibility of abuse.

-Dave

[LoyceV]

Well that is annoying. I can't believe that nobody thought someone might not want to have some unknown node open a massive channel to them.
Seems to be something that should be looked at. Unless I am missing something it does seem to open up the possibility of abuse.

If someone opens a channel that eats up your entire node's sending capacity, shouldn't that be handled by routing fees? Those should be high enough to pay for rebalancing your channels.

[darosior]

Hi Dave,

Well that is annoying. I can't believe that nobody thought someone might not want to have some unknown node open a massive channel to them.

Why not ? A channel opening to you does not require anything from your side (apart few bytes of RAM but....), people usually strive to have big inbound channels.

Seems to be something that should be looked at. Unless I am missing something it does seem to open up the possibility of abuse.

FWIW that's again somehing that can be done with C-lightning plugins, it's called the `openchannel` hook.

If someone opens a channel that eats up your entire node's sending capacity, shouldn't that be handled by routing fees? Those should be high enough to pay for rebalancing your channels.

But a channel opening to you doesnt eat your sending capacity ?.. It just increases your receiving capacity (and potentially the number of routes we can reach you through).

[Baofeng]

Pardon my ignorance guys, But any of you heard about this so called: LSATs: Pseudonymous Authentication using Bitcoin Lightning Payments? What's your thoughts about this one? Good idea or what?

https://medium.com/tierion/lsats-pseudonymous-authentication-using-bitcoin-lightning-payments-459e209b4b36

[DaveF]

Hi Dave,

Well that is annoying. I can't believe that nobody thought someone might not want to have some unknown node open a massive channel to them.

Why not ? A channel opening to you does not require anything from your side (apart few bytes of RAM but....), people usually strive to have big inbound channels.

99% of the time it probably would not matter. I was doing an test of some stuff during the week [yeah I know use testnet for testing] and 3 places had opened MASSIVE channels to me. I thought / figured at the time it was a mistake. In the time I have been playing around with LN in TOTAL I have not sent & received in total as much as any one of those channels. And then an hour or 2 later they closed them.

I mentioned it to someone Friday who said, "yeah I had the same thing happen a week or 2 ago" he also mentioned that it did not appear on 1ml or other LN explorers. I did not check on mine. Just big open followed a bit later by a big close. So somebody is playing around with something. Which is fine but, I just did not expect it and was wondering if there was a way to prevent it.

Seems to be something that should be looked at. Unless I am missing something it does seem to open up the possibility of abuse.

FWIW it worth that's again somehing that can be done with C-lightning plugins, it's called the `openchannel` hook.

That is probably what I am look for. Thanks.

-Dave

[amishmanish]

-snip

That's an overkill for a simple Lightning Network node. By default, one have 24 hours to bring back one's node online before forced channel closure (old channel state might be broadcast to the network).

I followed the discussion for a few pages but couldn't find the question that came to my mind on seeing this. My ISP has these issues where the connection could be gone for more than 24 hrs. (In reality, the ADSL lines are lying exposed on the ground and the hand-twisted connection frequently gets sheared by passing cars, marauding kids and I'm not even joking). If i run an LN node and open a channel by putting some Sats and making a funding transaction, does the onus now lies on me to ensure that it is always online (or online atleast once in 24 hours)??

If for some reason, i happen to just leave house or the neighbor's kid decide to pull on the lines, would that mean forced channel closure leading me to pay on-chain fee unnecessarily?
Sorry if i have not googled for this. I'd like to read more about the challenges and roadmap of LN.

[Rath_]

If for some reason, i happen to just leave house or the neighbor's kid decide to pull on the lines, would that mean forced channel closure leading me to pay on-chain fee unnecessarily?

A forced channel closure occurs when one of the parties wants to close the channel without any negotiations. This is mostly used when the other party is offline. You misunderstood one thing. It doesn't happen automatically after 24 hours. You can be offline for months and nothing will happen as long as the other party doesn't close the channel while you are absent.

Most of the people who run LN nodes don't close offline channels forcefully the moment they go down. I used to wait a couple days before doing so. Once one of the parties decides to close the channel, you have (by default) 24 hours to come back online in order to check if the other person didn't broadcast old state of your channel. I don't think many people know how to exploit it intentionally.

I am not sure about other implemantations but LND allows you to set up a watchtower which checks if the channel is closing and if the other party didn't cheat. You can set it up on a cheap VPS, but you don't have to worry about it if you don't have much money locked up in the channel.

Note: The other party can't simply steal all of your money. You would have to push the coins to their side by for example buying something and then receive payment from someone through that channel. In the meantime, the other person would have to make a copy of the channel's state.