Hey everyone,
This is Week-0 of my Lightning routing experiment.
This is Week-0 of my Lightning routing experiment.
I’m a new operator running a family-owned bare-metal node out of the rural Midwest (Antriksh ⚡ Node). My goal for the next several weeks is to document what it’s like to start routing from scratch, learn channel management, and share what works — and what doesn’t — for small operators.
Since I don’t have the capital to join the big “G-Spot” experiment (their minimum channel size is much higher than my wallet balance), I’m taking a practical small-node approach instead:
✅ What I’m starting with
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~640k sats in my on-chain wallet
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A few solid peers (ACINQ, others)
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One or two new channels I’ll be opening in the next week
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Zero past routing experience — this is a true baseline
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A custom stats page + tip server I built (and open-sourced) to track my progress
🎯 My plan for this experiment
Each week I’ll post:
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How many sats routed (if any!)
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Fee revenue
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Channel changes (opens, closes, rebalancing, etc.)
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Liquidity challenges
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What mistakes I made
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What I learned
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What I would do differently
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Hard numbers & screenshots for transparency
I’ll also track things like:
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Routing performance
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Forwarding events
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Capacity distribution
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Whether small nodes can gain inbound
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How long it takes to get first routing success
🔍 Why I’m doing this
A lot of new node operators ask the same questions I had:
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“How do I get my first route?”
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“Are small nodes pointless?”
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“How do I grow inbound?”
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“Do channel experiments actually matter?”
My hope is that this series gives real-world data — especially for operators starting with under 1M sats.
📝 What’s next
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Open a couple of strategic channels
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Try small inbound-friendly fee policies
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Begin measuring daily activity
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Share Week-1 results in a few days
If you want me to test something — fee schedules, peer suggestions, rebalancing strategies, etc. — let me know and I’ll include it.
Thanks, and see you in Week-1 ⚡