lightning network raspberry PI newbie

[thefeatweb]

Hi,
I have got an unused rPi and HDD and i would like to start a lightning full node.
Does anybody have already some experience?
How much does you earn with a full node?

Thanks.
DD

[DaveF]

1) It has to be a RPi4 and a 1TB drive

2) Not a lot, depends on how much BTC you lock up to open channels to how many other nodes. For the most part you are going to spend more in TX fees opening, closing, tweaking channels then you will earn in fees.

3) look for one of the node in a box setups be it raspiblitz, mynode, umbrel, you can do it all yourself but you have to know what you are doing.

4) Remember you have to be on 24/7 and have good backups.

-Dave

[BitMaxz]

I don't think you can earn much on having a lightning node usually the fees used on lightning are around 1 to 3 sats it's not worth it than claiming free sats from faucets.

There is a thread here where you can check how much he earns from lightning routing fees check the link below.

- https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5369431.0

[Findingnemo]

You can earn a few sats with a decent amount of BTC via routing the payment but when you calculate the running cost probably it will end up as a net loss, so don't set up LN with the intention of making money.

Read this part below to get an idea of how much you can actually make via the LN node.

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How much money can you make on running a Lightning Network node?

Unless you have a lot of coins, your earnings won't be enough to cover both hardware and maintenance costs. If you are already running a full node to support the network then a small Lightning node won't put much stress on your hardware.

I have been running a small node (6 channels; ~0.10 BTC capacity) for about 3 months now. I earned over 500 satoshi in the first month during which I was experimenting a lot with my fee settings for each channel. In the second and the third month I earned ~110 and ~160 satoshi respectively without paying much attention to my node. If you want to see up-to-date stats, check out The Lightning Network node experience thread.
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[Cricktor]

I run a RaspiBlitz on a 8GB RAM RPi 4B with a 1TB SSD and also an Umbrel on another RPi with same specs (the Umbrel doesn't have live LN channels, the RaspiBlitz does have a few live ones). The initial blockchain download (IBD) with a HDD on a RPi will be a pain and will take several days. Some months ago I had to redo the IBD on my Umbrel node because prior it somehow f'ed up with free space and the Bitcoin Core node on my Umbrel got screwed up beyond repair.
The IBD on Umbrel with tweaked dbcache of about 4GB and my 100MBit downstream capacity internet connection took little less than 96h, but that was with a SSD. Expect double or more time for the IBD with a HDD depending also how fast this HDD can seek its heads around.

[Medusah]

It really depends on your budget.  But if you are not a multi-millionaire, like the rest of us, then the answer you are looking for is: not much, if any.  

If you think about it, you earn about the same as you would if you used that piece of hardware for mining.

[apogio]

I have got an unused rPi and HDD and i would like to start a lightning full node.

A lightning node requires a full bitcoin node in order to run. Imagine that it actually sits on top of it. I would go with an SSD. The initial blockchain syncing process can be a pain using an HDD. Plus, the HDD will generally live less than the SSD.

Does anybody have already some experience?

Yes I have used two implementations for LN nodes. LND and CLN.

How much does you earn with a full node?

You earn sats only for routing payments through the network. Imagine you want to pay Alex who is in the US. In order for you to pay Alex, you need a route between your node and Alex's node. You can have a direct channel or an indirect channel, through my node for example. For the job of routing the payment I demand 1000 sats flat fee. Therefore, I will get paid 1000 sats. However, depending on multiple factors, your node may only process a very small amount of payments (or perhaps no payment at all). Finally, there are multiple approaches to payment routing. I mean, sometimes the shortest path is chosen, or sometimes the cheaper path is chosen. Sometimes the path is chosen randomly, assuring higher privacy but being more expensive.

[odolvlobo]

Hi,
I have got an unused rPi and HDD and i would like to start a lightning full node.
Does anybody have already some experience?
How much does you earn with a full node?

Thanks.
DD

I have RaspiBolt running on an RPi 4 with a 2 GB SSD with bitcoind, lnd, an electrum server, and a block explorer. A RPi 4 is necessary and I strongly recommend a SSD over a HDD. A working knowledge of Linux is also necessary for a project like this.

https://raspibolt.org