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How to Make Sense of Lightning Channels Map?
1409 sats \ 6 comments \ @spiderman 31 Aug bitcoin_beginners
So, out of curiosity, I was just looking at the Mempool lightning channels map.
The graphics looks interesting, much like the route map of a big airliner connecting points on earth, but apart from that, I could not make much sense. In particular,
  • Does each dot represent the (approximate) Geolocation of a node? Or is it only right up to the country level? I mean in the US, the brightest dot falls in the middle, likely in Kansas state, is that reliable?
  • The vertices represent the connecting channel, with the amount? Does it mean any transaction below the amount is likely to pass through between those nodes?
  • I am not a node runner, but use custodial lightning sats with the Blockstream Green android app. Can I find a node corresponding to Blockstream and its channels? Suppose a pay at a coffee shop in Hong Kong using Blockstream green. How do I figure whether the node has liquidity to handle the transaction?
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1000 sats \ 0 replies \ @nullcount 31 Aug
Does each dot represent the (approximate) Geolocation of a node? Or is it only right up to the country level? I mean in the US, the brightest dot falls in the middle, likely in Kansas state, is that reliable?
Mempool uses the MaxMind GeoIP database. It attempts to map every public IPv4 or IPv6 address to a country, state, city. It's not perfect, but pretty accurate.
However, most LN nodes use Tor only and don't have an IP address to track. Additionally, some nodes have many IP addresses in different countries. Nodes can also trivially set up a proxy to make their IP address look like its coming from the country of the proxy and not the country where the actual node hardware is hosted.
The vertices represent the connecting channel, with the amount? Does it mean any transaction below the amount is likely to pass through between those nodes?
No. That's capacity, for a tx to work, you need liquidity in the direction of the payment.
I am not a node runner, but use custodial lightning sats with the Blockstream Green android app. Can I find a node corresponding to Blockstream and its channels?
Maybe blockstream's node is one of these: https://amboss.space/search?term=YmxvY2tzdHJlYW0=
You can generate an invoice using your wallet, and paste it into lightningdecoder.com. It will tell you the pubkey of the destination node for that invoice.
Suppose a pay at a coffee shop in Hong Kong using Blockstream green. How do I figure whether the node has liquidity to handle the transaction?
Only way to know is to try! You wallet will attempt dozens or hundreds of possible paths looking for one with sufficient liquid to process the payment. Most wallets will automatically make the payment once it finds a route. However, if you're a wizard, you can probe the path first to see if there is liquid without actually sending the payment. This involves custom route building and crafting custom onion htlcs.
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13 sats \ 2 replies \ @Undisciplined 31 Aug
I suspect you're right about it putting nodes in the geographic center of whatever location it knows for them.
There's somewhere in Missouri that is the center of the US. Someone told me that there's a private residence at the address and they've been raided by the FBI a bunch of times because of this same glitch.
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21 sats \ 1 reply \ @SwapMarket 31 Aug
that's horrible if true. any source?
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Undisciplined 31 Aug
My source was a grad school friend who told me about it.
Basically, anytime a location was just logged as USA it would be geotagged to that location. Eventually, the owners put up signs all over the property to encourage law enforcement to make sure they had the right address.
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @d680ecaa8e 31 Aug
Exactly each transaction pass by these nodes.
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @DarthCoin 31 Aug
Keep in mind an important aspect of these LN explorers: represent ONLY the public nodes/channels. There are mord other private (unannounced) nodes/channels.
Also please read my explanation here https://darth-coin.github.io/general/omg-ln-nodes-on-amazon-en.html And https://darth-coin.github.io/nodes/private-ln-nodes-en.html
So don't take those stats as real representative of LN, there's much more that we do not see it.
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