Yield is not a fiat concept. Risk/reward is a fundamental axiom. If there is no reward (yield), then there is little incentive to take risk.

All LN liquidity is at risk in hot wallets. Because of low yield, we now have hub-and-spoke and increasing centralization to achieve capital efficiency. Node/channel counts are decreasing and average channel size is increasing. It is not debatable; it is a fact: https://www.fidelitydigitalassets.com/research-and-insights/lightning-network-expanding-bitcoin-use-cases

Not a good look. Unless you're a centralized business seeking economies of scale and crowding others out - then it's going just great.

Absolutely correct - the heuristics of pathfinding cause small channels to see far, far less activity, even proportionally speaking.

Whoa... I think I finally understood what you're getting at.

So, with the mempool.space approach, it is effectively a universal inclusion rate, and as such, it is intrinsically a high-water mark that is pressured up by all fee market activity.

However, it sounds like you're also saying that since some block producers, like Ocean+Datum or Braiins+Stratum v2, can purposely assert alternate block inclusion preferences/"filters," these choices put downward pressure on "aligned" fee markets.

So what you're seeing is that there are effectively two parallel fee markets at play? One for all-comers, more or less as described by mempool.space; and another for bitcoin spends with some time to spare, where backward-looking timechain-sourced fee rates will effectively include a discount rate over the last N blocks proportional to how many "aligned" miners versus "profit-maximizing" miners are servicing the mempool.

Is that what you're getting at? If that's what you're saying, I think I you kind of just blew my mind, wow!

I missed this post, so thanks for sharing! My only question, though: since this guy is from Ocean, isn't this expected behavior for him?

My understanding is they actively avoid rational mining behavior, forgoing profit expressly for the purpose of censoring transactions from their blocks to virtue signal about the "right way to use Bitcoin." Is that correct?

Either way, it's beautifully their prerogative to mine as they please, even if it is not aligned with Bitcoin Core. Still, at the end of the day, they have a tradition of throwing value around to make political statements. So, all that being said: isn't this kind of "par for the course" for Ocean folks?

Pardon my ignorance, but what do the horse and pistol icons mean, please?

We can bike shed all you want about which valid transactions are “spam” and what is a proper estimate, but Bitcoin a permissionless protocol with an open fee market. Unless you have a low time preference and use custodial L2s, you have to deal with reality, not idealism - and reality is exactly what mempool.space provides.

My pleb friends and I lack the privilege of having tens of millions of sats in limbo indefinitely, and I beg mercy for anyone once those sats are locked in a LN 2-of-2 multisig with a channel partner that quit listening for a funding transaction after expiry - ouch!

I know it hurts to pay these fees, but we have rules, not rulers. These fees are the unfortunate cost of such an arrangement, whether any of us likes it or not. :(

If you can wait for ideal fee rates and you are not at risk of the payer doublespending while you wait, then maybe switch to new tools that let you choose your own fee rate, but I’d say there is reason why so many are switching to mempool.space as the default - it really is the best choice for reliable block inclusion.

I think it’s because LND was early and has beautiful documentation. Their APIs are well documented and spell out options and behaviors, and best of all, the docs offer examples for gRPC, REST, and command-line, and examples typically include popular languages, like JavaScript and Python. Here a nice example that helps you increase fee rate if your channel operation is bogged down in the mempool. It automatically figures out when to CPFP or RBF - nice!

Being early and good won it inclusion into all of the “LN node kits,” like Umbrel and RaspiBlitz, which is what plebs mostly reach for, since LN operations can be a lot of work if you go it alone without the help of these packages.

Thus, you wind up with lots of developers, companies, and plebs using LND.

I bought a $50 Subway gift card off of Fold, paid from my LN node, which scored me 4% sats back. I also bought a $200 Starbucks gift card from Bitrefill. I loaded these gift cards into the respective retailer's mobile app to stack loyalty points as I redeem them.

These may not be the most exciting uses of my corn, but they are delicious uses, at least. :)

My brother - I feel your pain! Alas, the problem with low time-preference, is we sometimes fail to respect the value of our time! I should just pay a more reasonable fee and get the sleep I need, but instead I always try to save a few sats and wind up watching the mempool for an hour, lol! :)

LOLOLOL - so, so true! :) ... and like so many other cases, they got what they paid for - ha ha, I'm dyinggggg! :) :) :)

Shout out to @rot13maxi

Honestly, even the fancy add-on GUIs will still make these sorts of errors, too. I have provoked this exact same issue and similar, albeit simpler troubleshooting process when using ThunderHub to open a channel. ThunderHub shows a floating point value for sats/vbyte when calculating a proposed fee amount; but then when you submit, the value is truncated to an integer, which will cause your transaction to lag behind half the mempool in a low or concentrated fee rate environment.

What you see in ThunderHub:

What you get in the mempool:

What you need on chain:

I feel your pain. Hopefully devs will continue to iterate and eliminate all these problematic issues so that plebs aren't forced into custodial solutions.

No, RBF would have failed because Lightning channels are 2-of-2 multisignature wallet scripts. If OP was successful with the RBF, then that would have permanently confused both channel partners, since the transaction would have been maleated to a new transaction hash/ID - basically Mt. Gox-ing yourself.

CPFP or a miner bribe/MEV (i.e., Mempool.space Accelerator) are the correct ways to solve the predicament.

Any reason it might not be visible in the dropdown? I even enabled NSFW, but I'm still not seeing it in the dropdown.

What a disgusting clip! That misogynist twerp is a real problem for Bitcoin’s image, and it’s really rather gross so many bitcoiners fawn over him.

He always struck me as a tool, and so I wondered what possible qualification he has to justify so much airtime. That clip should be enough to put my mind at ease, though: he is too nasty and harbors too much hate for me to care.

Thanks for sharing your truth, and sorry you have to deal with this.

Sorry for the remedial question, but what is “assmilking?” (Not wanting Google to retain that one as part of my search history, lol)!

I appreciate the inside scoop! Really valuable insights - thanks very much!

Absolutely. US NIST and US White House both agree, too: https://www.nist.gov/news-events/news/2024/08/nist-releases-first-3-finalized-post-quantum-encryption-standards

If I'm not mistaken, lots of existing tools already use post-quantum encryption (PQE), like Chrome, Apple iMessage, Telegram, Signal, Mullvad, etc., so it feels like those who are not adopting will be slow gazelles.

I’m relieved that Hunter Beast is working on BIPs for quantum resistant BTC address types, but I just hope Core and the community start engaging: https://github.com/cryptoquick/bips/blob/p2qrh/bip-p2qrh.mediawiki

For a decade or so, it was FUD, but quantum tech is advancing rapidly, so the time has come to start engaging.