Lightning Liquidity Marketplaces
5365 sats \ 6 comments \ @kr 23 Dec 2022 bitcoin
In the last 30 days, the Amboss Magma marketplace has seen some incredible growth.
They’ve seen a 25% jump in total liquidity deployed on their platform.
LN+ is having a solid month too, another 50+ BTC from a higher base of total liquidity deployed.
Curious to know how many SN users have used any of these platforms… If you’ve tried them, do you have a favorite?
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578 sats \ 2 replies \ @Crizzo 23 Dec 2022
I have gotten the vast majority of my channels from LN+. It's a great way to get matching inbound liquidity for your outbound. The quality of the peers can vary wildly though. Some will not honor the commitment they made to keep the channel open for X months and close channels early. I had one guy close our channel literally the day we opened it and did not respond to inquiries as to why. I've ended up in swaps with people that only have a few channels and never grow. Sometimes I get connected with nodes with terrible uptime.
What I'm trying to say is it's a crapshoot. I wouldn't even consider it a marketplace, because that implies you get to shop around and pick your product. You either just join a swap offer or make your own, and whoever you match with you are expected to open channels and honor the time commitment. You can restrict the swap to nodes with X amount of channels and X node capacity at least. As you get bigger and qualify for swaps with larger nodes the quality of peers should increase.
Overall I found it very useful for diving into LN and getting a feel for things. After I got myself established in the network it made more sense to be more targeted in how I open channels. Using analytics like LNDg or https://lnnodeinsight.com/ gave me suggestions on opening more productive channels and filling a need within the network.
As for Magma, I have sold one channel there and it has had zero activity. I get the feeling that Magma is for larger operators who can provide really well connected liquidity sources, and the customers are going to be merchants who really need and can use incoming liquidity. It's probably not great for a smaller hobbyist. I might be wrong though, my experience is limited.
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10 sats \ 1 reply \ @kr OP 23 Dec 2022
appreciate your perspective, very helpful!
if you don’t mind me asking, what is your goal with your node? are you a payment router? merchant? service provider?
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457 sats \ 0 replies \ @Crizzo 23 Dec 2022
My goal is somewhere between being a productive router and just having a decently connected lightning node for personal use. I would ideally like to be able to stack some sats by routing, but so far I am down about 50k and only make a few hundred a week, so the road to break even is long.
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30 sats \ 2 replies \ @blockguard 23 Dec 2022
Could you please explain what are those liquidity marketplaces?
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457 sats \ 0 replies \ @BTC_LN 23 Dec 2022
LN+ provides a match making service so you can open to other nodes and they open to you. This gives you free incoming liquidity. Doing this also decentralizes the Lightning Network by helping nodes connect to various other nodes besides the top liquidity providers. On long term this will allow us to be more resilient especially if top nodes go down, like Zero Fee Routing's node did recently (top 3 node).
Amboss, Pool an Ads all provide a paid way to get incoming liquidity. So you don't need to open to anyone, nodes open to you for a fee.
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457 sats \ 0 replies \ @sime 23 Dec 2022
Buying inbound lightning channels. Without inbound liquidity you cannot receive payments.
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