Close Lightning channel and lost btc

[lopesleo]

Hello, I recently tried to open a lightning channel in my Electrum wallet, I put the maximum available value (all my btc) and by mistake I put a very low completion fee. To try to change the fee value and thus speed up the verification, I closed the channel (forced closure), before it was signed and opened.

Now all my values have disappeared, the channel is as “REQUESTED_FCLOSE”, there is no channel ID, but the app shows the balance of the BTC that I selected.

I would like to know what I can do to recover my BTCs

[1714487225]

1714487225

[1714487225]

1714487225

[1714487225]

1714487225

[BitMaxz]

I think force close takes 5 days or two so it might take days before you will receive the BTC in your Mainnet Electrum wallet.

But if you insist that it is a bug try contacting Electrum devs and maybe they can able to help you with your issue here's the link below.

https://github.com/spesmilo/electrum/issues

[PX-Z]

Here's the answer i found online.

"When a channel is closed, the funds are swept to an on-chain address. Typically, it takes 144 blocks (about 24 hours) before the funds from the closed channel appear in a user's local wallet."
Source: https://doc.breez.technology/Closed-Channel.html.

The number of blocks on this article maybe is only based on the service they offer. But surely, your balance will be show to your electrum wallet again after some time, days or week. So what you need to do is to wait since this is basically a user mistake.

[lopesleo]

I understand, I thank everyone for the explanations!

My doubt is that because the channel was not opened before I made the closure, this could cause some problem or losses, but apparently the right thing will be to wait and pray that everything goes well.

Here are the screenshots of how it is being displayed in the Electrum app, maybe this will help with something.

https://talkimg.com/images/2024/04/14/jPdIC.jpeg
https://talkimg.com/images/2024/04/14/jPXAJ.jpeg
https://talkimg.com/images/2024/04/14/jPU8W.jpeg

[_act_]

You can see how the bitcoin network fee has increased significantly recently. When closing a channel, you will need to pay for the transaction fee. I do not know how the fee will be charged when a channel is force closed. Were you the one that customised the fee for the channel closing? If you customised the fee, what is the fee rate that you used? The bitcoin network is congested right now.

[SatoPrincess]

If it’s been more than 24hours, I suggest you take BitMaxz advice and create an issue in GitHub. They may be able to return your funds.

[lopesleo]

You can see how the bitcoin network fee has increased significantly recently. When closing a channel, you will need to pay for the transaction fee. I do not know how the fee will be charged when a channel is force closed. Were you the one that customised the fee for the channel closing? If you customised the fee, what is the fee rate that you used? The bitcoin network is congested right now.

At no time did I select the closing fee, so I believe it was automatic.

[PX-Z]

If it’s been more than 24hours, I suggest you take BitMaxz advice and create an issue in GitHub. They may be able to return your funds.

Creating an issue on electrum github page won't help you for them (electrum) to return your funds, this is not a payment gateway that they can refund you after submitting a ticket.
This is a known user issue that only waiting can help to solve such problems OR it will not — expensive lesson i may say. Some 

[lopesleo]

If it’s been more than 24hours, I suggest you take BitMaxz advice and create an issue in GitHub. They may be able to return your funds.

Thank you for the suggestion! And as it has been 24 hours, I just opened a topic in the forum indicated by BitMaxz.

[lopesleo]

I downloaded the desktop version of the wallet and logged in (read-only version) and this appeared, no opening transaction or lightning channel and apparently the btc are in the wallet, I don’t understand anything anymore, because in the app it is still the same way as the previous screenshots.

https://talkimg.com/images/2024/04/14/jTM4P.png

[nc50lc]

I downloaded the desktop version of the wallet and logged in (read-only version) and this appeared, no opening transaction or lightning channel and apparently the btc are in the wallet, I don’t understand anything anymore, because in the app it is still the same way as the previous screenshots.

You mentioned that you set a very low fee in the open channel transaction, right?
I'm thinking that the server where your wallet has connected to, already dropped it from its mempool for being at the bottom of its mempool size, so your newly restored wallet didn't see it.

There are bad and good news to this:

• Bad News: (more of "troublesome") The transaction will still show up once it's rebroadcasted to that server's mempool; because its peers may still keep it and some nodes still have it.
• Good News: Since it's not showing now, you have the opportunity to spend your coins (that transaction's inputs) to a new transaction.
  So that once that new transaction confirms, the open channel transaction will be invalidated.

The steps are quite simple (to prevent the 'bad news'):

• Restore your wallet not as watch-only, and check if the transaction didn't show up as well.
• Use "coin control" (instructions) to select any input of your open channel transaction.
  Or just select all which could be more expensive if there are more than one inputs.
• Then go to 'Send' tab and send any amount to your own address or pay someone, both will get the selected coins to be spent in that new transaction.
  But you have to make sure that the fee is good this time to be mined while the majority of mempools doesn't have the open channel transaction since it is opt-in-rbf 'false' flagged, nodes with the 'open channel' transaction that doesn't support full-rbf will reject the new transaction.

You can also skip the first step to restore and use the watch-only wallet instead.
But you must export the transaction as text (Share->Copy to Clipboard), send that to your Android and copy the text.
And in the Android Electrum; import (Send->Paste) then sign and broadcast that with your original wallet.

Alternatively:
Open the original Android Electrum and select the same server as the watch-only wallet so that it will change the status of your "unconfirmed" open channel transaction into "local".
Once it's Local or if its already Local (I see it in your previous screenshot), click on it and use "remove" to delete the local transaction.
Then, create a new transaction.