For all these years, I feel like I haven't heard about a preferred, or handful of preferred, options for managing lightning node liquidity automatically. Doing it manually sucks, which is what I've been doing since forever[1] (usually because a stacker tells me they can't make a payment or something), but I know there are options out there, like litd. I just haven't seen anyone do an apples to oranges comparison or compare one solution to another. I'd expect automatic liquidity management to be part of the grab bag of advice for lightning node operators, so not seeing much of it makes me think ...
- the juice isn't worth the squeeze, or
- I've missed the memo
If you run a routing node or service, how do you manage liquidity? Have you tried another way? What are these best options out there?
tbf we have low liquidity needs compared to the average service's needs. ↩
I had to build my own app
Lightning control center
#1553019
i disagree with those who say rebalances are a waste in fees , sure if you can let the channels rebalance organically and don't mind waiting and waiting forever it will work however with LCC I am able to set scheduled rebalances on individual channels , do loop outs (the real profit killer) and now with my ROI tracker i know exactly which channel benefits form rebalancing or not .. what i found is that based on each peer location there are peak routing hrs and even days so i used claude ai to analyze the best times in a 24hr period to rebalance right before the peak time , therefore eliminating countless rebalances that did not produce immediate results .. so i found that smaller but targeted rebalances does work wonders in maintaining a channel routing patterns flowing
now all i need to do is look at my analytics page and know which channel is worth rebalancing and which one is not .. the fees i manage manually by checking the strategy page which is simply a page that shows me peer fees , capacity , liquidity balance and gives basic suggestion on what to do , more like guidelines than set rules
This is how LCC does the targeted rebalances , select peers, select amount , cap your fees ..send it
18 sats it's negligible
When I initially started being a noderunner, I used Lightning Terminal to auto-manage my fees. I found that it was too slow at reacting and finding a fee balance, so I moved onto LNDg.
I used LNDg for about 2 years~, both it's auto-fees and rebalancing setting. It took me about 2 months to finally figure out how it worked and about 6 months to find the balance I wanted with my node. This was largely because I was just adjusting numbers randomly rather than intelligently.
As of 4 months ago~ I'm using a custom software written in Go as my nodes needs grew beyond what LNDg could do on its own. Another reason I moved to my own software was increasing the amount of automation due to having 200~ channels being too much oversight for my liking.
how's it coming along are you ready to share it yet ? plenty of good dashboards for smaller node operators but not for large ones like yours
If you can stomach the slop, there's a lot of advice here, ~lol
I've never managed to route profitably or at significant amounts, so I'm not the person to ask. But I do remember doing some manual liquidity management by specifying the outgoing channel. I remember wishing that I could specify both the outgoing and the incoming channel. If you could do that from the
cli, then it wouldn't be too hard to build your own liquidity automation tool. (Just rebalance your own channels when they become imbalanced)I do manual circular rebalances now using a
cli, and I could wrap it in something else, but I'd like to avoid maintaining more code if there's something well maintained out there that I can just review and use.you should try LCC
https://github.com/lioranecho-cpu/lightning-control-center
can you specify both outgoing and incoming channels? that's the part I never figured out for more targeted rebalancing
Yes, bos does this.
bos rebalance --in <in node> --out <out node> --amount 30000https://github.com/Impa10r/peerswap-web for both liquidity management and auto fees. It now works with or without Liquid node.
For fees on LND, I like LNDg. It really does a great job. I don't like it for balancing. I never can get it to work, so I swap manually using lightning terminal. On CLN I like CL Boss for balancing, but don't automatically adjust fees.
i used lightning terminal automatic fee adjustment when i was running a public LND node.
I used Ride the Lightning in the past. Looked ok, but didn’t use it much.
I've used them for a home node in the past. It's nice to have an interface and visualize things. They don't do auto-liquidity/auto-fee setting though afaik.
Short version: there isn't one tool, because the answer splits by node implementation — and on LND the pieces arrived separately, which is probably why there's no bake-off.
LND
bos rebalancecan target a ratio (--out-target-inbound=capacity/2) and restrict which channels it uses (--in-filter/--out-filter), so you wrap it in your own loop.loop outdrains an outbound-heavy channel on-chain, Pool buys/sells inbound at auction. For SN-sized liquidity needs that's often enough by itself.CLN
xrebalanceplugin) in one plugin.Cheaper swaps: boltz-client (both LND and CLN) does submarine/chain swaps, which can beat circular rebalancing because you're not paying routing fees through your own channels.
Why no apples-to-apples (honest read): the full-auto tools are optimizing routing revenue, and routing revenue is thin. Circular rebalancing also has a mean property — you pay routing fees to move your own liquidity, so unless you route that volume back it's a straight loss. That's why most operators settle on fee automation + threshold swaps + occasionally buying inbound (Magma/Pool) instead of one black box.
For low-liquidity needs like SN, I'd start with charge-lnd (or LNDg auto-fees) to take fees off manual, plus
loop out/Boltz on a cron when a channel crosses ~80/20. That kills the "a stacker can't pay" failures without running a rebalancer for its own sake.I’ve been wondering about this too. There has to be an easier way than constantly checking the channels and fixing liquidity yourself.
Interesting post, great question you've asked! I've always wanted to have a node but I find it complicated because of the connectivity.
Operator of a small routing node here. The highest-ROI automation is the fee curve, not the rebalancer: set ppm proportional to how depleted the channel is (charge-lnd does this natively, LNDg auto-fees approximates it from forward history). Fat outbound side = cheap fees to attract flow; nearly drained = prohibitive fees so you stop selling your last sats at a discount. That one policy kills most manual fee babysitting.
The rebalance side deserves the skepticism in this thread. Circular rebalance math rarely closes for small nodes: you pay routing fees to move your own money, and unless that channel forwards the volume back it's a straight loss. My rule: only auto-rebalance channels whose weekly forward revenue exceeds the rebalance cost, with a hard max-fee-relative cap; everything else gets a loop-out past ~80/20.
Uncomfortable truth: peer selection beats every tool listed here. One channel to a high-flow peer earns more than perfect fee curves on ten dead-end channels. Automate fees first, rebalance second, re-check peers before buying more automation.
Simply doesn't need touched that often unless you're sinking or draining, and that's more of a splicing/swap automation, not really channel balancing
Should never ever ever ever be doing circular rebalances, it's all cost no benefit. That's leftover anti pattern from the early days.
If a channel is exhausted you set a prohibitive fee on it and it sorts itself out. If it's lopsided the other way you set it to near 0.
A channel being exhausted one way or the other doesn't effect the ability to send or receive if you have others that aren't. Redundancy, not balance.
Pub shows me when a channel opens, closes, or is offline. When one closes I'll open another with the resulting chain balance if it was meaningful relative to liabilities. If one has been offline for a long time, maybe close it if encumbered funds are material, and reuse. Handful of ops annually, an hour work tops to know my topology.