What is the income of your LN routing fees? \ stacker news ~bitcoin

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What is the income of your LN routing fees?

1478 sats \ 12 comments \ @handsome_latino 26 Feb 2023 bitcoin

Not too excited about nostr that much anymore (I liked it when it was mostly about chats or messaging, but not a huge fan of social media myself), so looking to manage my node a bit better.

Was wondering if you guys wanna share sats income on your LN. I don't know if there is a way to prove you're being honest, but your reputation on the line might be enough proof for me ;)

River Financial (at the time the 4th largest node) earned 0.4 BTC (40 million sats) on September 2022, out of a total 420 BTC.

For full disclosure, since the time of inception my node has made about 50 sats. I'm not looking to make a profit, my job at the fiat mine is good and stable and I mostly use my node to pay others or buy stuff, but it would be a fun challenge to create a "better" node.

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50 sats \ 0 replies \ @kilianbuhn 26 Feb 2023

I think it is impossible 🙅🏻‍♀️ for normies to actually be sustainably profitable.

You need such big channels and so many of them. And then think about breakeven with hardware and electricity cost. 🤔🤔

I'm not saying it's impossible. But it certainly a high bar 😑

50 sats \ 3 replies \ @Bear 26 Feb 2023

My node is making roughly 10 Sats a day routing. Yesterday someone zapped me 1000sats on nostr.

30 sats \ 1 reply \ @LowFeesBuddy 26 Feb 2023

I was making something like 20 sats a day with a hands off approach. Then I started opening lots more channels (to good nodes), automatically adjusting fees with LNDg, rebalancing channels heavily, and improved that income 20x times. Still not great and it doesn't even pay probably for the electricity it uses, but it makes me proud.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @handsome_latino OP 27 Feb 2023

that's cool to hear! Yeah, something like that would make me proud too

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @handsome_latino OP 26 Feb 2023

well you just made 50 sats on this post too ;)

there are some memes about shitposting memes in nostr rather than creating a LN to earn sats. Funny and sad.

60 sats \ 1 reply \ @felipehere 26 Feb 2023

I've been running a node for more than a year and I'm happy to summarize here my experience:

Revenue vs Profit: Depending on your channels, it is possible to boost fees earned by unprofitably rebalancing certain channels. I don't see the point of doing it so I personally find it more fun / interesting to focus on improving profit vs increasing revenue from fees.

Standardizing profit metrics: I've followed many discussions about routing earnings, profit, etc... I never felt confident that: a) people were measuring the same thing; or b) that they were using a meaningful metric. I personally find it more meaningful to install LNDg (a great tool to manage your Lightning node and analyze your performance as a router), go to the P&L section and look at your "Percent Cost" on the last 30 days, 90 days and Lifetime. If your "Percent Cost" is below 100%, you are profitable. In my case, it is above 100% in all 3 metrics (not profitable).

Conclusion: I'm not saying that it is impossible to profit from routing fees but it is definitely not trivial. Currently I don't spend a lot of time managing my node and my main reasons to keep running it are:

sovereignty... no need to rely on custodial lightning wallets;
avoiding fees when moving sats around (for you and family/friends);
learning :)

Have fun and thank you for raising this discussion!

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @handsome_latino OP 27 Feb 2023

Haven't tried LNDg but will read more about it. Definitely sounds like a fun experience to learn and in the near (or ... probably far) future it might be a very good skillset to have, along with understanding a bit of the programming side of bitcoin / LN.

Thanks for the share!

21 sats \ 2 replies \ @siggy47 26 Feb 2023

I have been running a node for over a year and it does not generate income at all, if you define income as profit. Even though I think I have gotten better at managing my node over time, it does less volume and earns lower fees than it did when bitcoin was trading at more than 50k. That's just my experience. I'm not in it for profit. I just want to run a decent node.

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @handsome_latino OP 26 Feb 2023

Sorry, by income I meant how many sats you ended up earning as a fee. Funny enough I also wrote I am not looking to make a profit ;)

The challenge of going from routing 1 sat / m to 100 sats / m is a fun challenge for a person who has too much time on their hands!

21 sats \ 0 replies \ @siggy47 26 Feb 2023

Sorry for the misunderstanding. You have me thinking about it more. Early on I set up LNDg to balance channels and some of my fees got pretty high. I would occasionally get a 200-300 sat route. Those days are over. I read @DarthCoin's guides and made some changes. I was running LND over tor, but now I run hybrid umbrel with tailscale. I also switched to zero fee base routing, and cut my channel count, reducing quantity and increasing capacity of each channel. Now I have a lot of routes where I earn nothing, but typically earn 100-250 sats a day on average. Sorry for the long winded response.

10 sats \ 0 replies \ @BlokchainB 26 Feb 2023

Been running a node for a few years now and it’s been a sat stink. But if ln takes off and I already have a legacy node maybe then I can see some value but until then it’s just a nice hobby in a an emergent technology

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @petertodd 26 Feb 2023

😂

I think my best day ever was $1. Even if every day was that good I wouldn't even cover hosting costs. But earning a profit isn't why I have a Lightning node.