tl;dr: I started a lightning node in 05/2018 and shut it down in 08/2026. It was fun.
Node history and some statistics (05/2025): #922297
After eight years of running the lightning node c-otto.de, I closed all channels and will stop the node once everything is settled. I won't talk about my motivation to do so (private reasons), but I can say that nothing major happened.
My node forwarded 1,382,310 transactions (how many full blocks did that save?) and had 3,444 channels. Of those, 2,898 were closed cooperatively (84.1%), 145 were force closed by my peer, 401 were force closed by my node. I opened 789 channels myself, while 2,467 channels were opened by others. For 188 very old channels I can't see the initiator right now.
Forwards:
- Largest: 160,130,043 sat (1.6 BTC) from okx to LOOP, 11/2025
- Runner-up: 94,764,890 sat (0.9 BTC) from Binance to LOOP, 07/2024
- Average: 124,026 sat
- Median: 20,003 sat
- 90th percentile: 214,000 sat
- 95th percentile: 462,925 sat
Special thanks to folks who sent me sats via keysend (361x a single sat, 83x 10 sat), and the very few peers who opened channels to me with the --push-amt option (intentionally, I hope).
Thanks a lot to everyone in the Lightning Network community, researchers (esp. René Pickhardt and Stefan Richter), everyone taking care of lnd (Lightning Labs, and other contributors), and others I forgot to mention here.
See you around,
Carsten
I hope you destroy those records. It's dangerous to the privacy of all lightning users how LND and other implementations preserve transaction records indefinitely by default.
Better to ask the Boltz guys!
Hey what does
--push-amtdo?Also, how do you actually collaboratively close? What is the UX like for that? I only have a basic Lightning node in Umbrel and only see a "close channel" option, I am assuming that is a one-way close. I wonder what collaborative means!
If you open a channel with "push amt", you basically donate these sats to your peer. From my perspective this appeared as a new channel with some sats already on my side (and in my posession from that point on). It's an easy, yet very expensive, way to create a balanced channel :)
Collaborative is the default, meaning that both nodes talk to each other and agree on how the close transaction should look like. For this they have to agree on a fee rate (which sometimes caused issues, but rarely is an issue nowadays), and of course both nodes check that the aren't ripped off. This, however, only works if both nodes are online (and agree, as described above). If anything goes wrong, one can always issue a unilateral close, often called "force close". In this variant it's a bit more expensive (the transaction is more complex), and you'd need to wait up to 14 days to get access to your share of the channel's funds (minus some fees).
My node had a channel with yours! Long ago! Thanks for being apart of the network
this autocorrupt has begun bothering me....
do you have any suggestions for people starting just now, and if anything changed since that post? and if there are any successors like your node to know about? cheers!
The lightning network constantly changes, which makes it hard to give general recommendations for running a node.
I think the most important aspect is that you should define a realistic goal. This could be "earn more sats in fees than I have to spend onchain" (which ignores the hot-wallet risk, server cost, or the value of one's time). Another aspect could be "I'm happy as long as I understand what's going on and learn new things on a daily basis" or "I need something to tinker with". These goals aren't easy to reach, but anything more than that takes a serious amount of dedication (and skills and capital). For me, it was a combination of those, with lots of tooling (think rebalance-lnd, lnd-manageJ), some research-y stuff like Pickhardt Payments, and lots of feerate tweaking.
You should keep in mind that running a node is no push-a-button-and-forget-about-it thing. You'd need to spend time with the node on an almost daily basis for a long time until you get things right and automated. You'll make mistakes, suffer from bugs and high fee waves, and most likely you'll get very little in return. If you enjoy creating something (abstract), or even just understanding how something works, that's very helpful to stay motivated.
Capital wise, I'd say roughly 5 BTC are necessary to provide node that gets used by others. The more, the better. I'm aware that this is quite a bit in fiat terms, but that's just how it is.
I don't know of any "successors", nor do I plan to create one myself. There are other hobby nodes, though. I even consider lnbig to be a hobby project, even though with quite a lot of capital involved :)
that is a misunderstanding of Jevon's Law!
strengthening lightning doesn't strongly affect unclaimed blockspace; rather, it helps maintain Bitcoin's dominance and reduces the risk of adventurous and unsophisticated folks falling prey to incompetent and malicious alternatives.
Thanks for your contribution to the network, it has been great having you as a peer.
Wish all the best for whatever is coming next for you.
It's been great being a channel partner with you! Best of luck Carsten!
I hope you get bored and come back.
...
it doesn't seem like boredom would help
o7
Idk how to earn form here can anyone help
Hi Carsten, thank you so much for all your contributions to lnd and rebalance-lnd over the years. I’ve learned a lot from them, especially when I was just getting started.
I hope you’ll come back one day as a node operator.
Take care, and best of luck
https://m.stacker.news/152892
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