Why are ⚡️lightning wallet fees so different and high?
1922 sats \ 26 comments \ @BTCExecutor 8 Jun 2023 bitcoin
I just did a little test, sending $50 (same recipient, within minutes of each other), from:
  • Breez wallet fee was $0.07 (385 sats)
  • Phoenix wallet fee was $0.04 (152 sats)
  • Wallet of Satoshi was $0.02 (92 sats)
I vaguely understand that fees depend on the routing and nodes used to get to the destination, but I’d appreciate any insight on:
  1. why such a wide variance in fees? and
  2. why such high fees relative to the transaction?
(And fwiw, WoS easily felt fastest and smoothest)
Thanks all
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53 sats \ 4 replies \ @designsats 8 Jun 2023
Btw. Blink has 0 fee (always) for intra-ledger (blink to blink) so if you are in Salvador or Guatemala or any place merchants use Blink - ditch that WoS
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80 sats \ 3 replies \ @03a8c5f853 8 Jun 2023
Blink seems pretty cool, but it requires a phone number to "sign up"... This pretty much ruined it for me...
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0 sats \ 2 replies \ @designsats 8 Jun 2023
Wait a bit and there will be option without phone number, but at the cost of no recovery if you lose the phone.
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0 sats \ 1 reply \ @03a8c5f853 22 Jun 2023
Great news, can't wait to test it.
No way to recover with a passphrase or something else? At least via e-mail, instead of the phone number... Phone numbers are personally identifying information.
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @designsats 22 Jun 2023
Its out I believe. I think 2FA is in the pipeline.
Its meant as trial.
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63 sats \ 3 replies \ @IgnaciobTato 8 Jun 2023
To think I've saw this debate the other day stating that WoS was more expensive than Phoenix. Have you tried Muun wallet for the LN Test? People are also complaining for high fees.
Is there a certain amount of sats where LN and On Chain are almost the same? I heard that high amounts on Lightning may have these difficulties, but how much is high? If it is On Chain you could just set 1 sat/byte and wait more minutes (or hours) for the transaction to be confirmed.
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290 sats \ 0 replies \ @DarthCoin 8 Jun 2023
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0 sats \ 1 reply \ @BTCExecutor OP 8 Jun 2023
Didn't try Muun bc I'd already confirmed earlier that it's super expensive, didn't want to waste sats
Great questions, I'm also curious abt the threshold
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @bitb 8 Jun 2023
Just moved 1000 sats from muun to wallet of satoshi to empty muun. I had to pay zero fees. Don't know why it worked.
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54 sats \ 0 replies \ @designsats 8 Jun 2023
This changes like weather. Same amount, same wallet, even same destination but different time might result in different fee.
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53 sats \ 2 replies \ @theinstagibbs 8 Jun 2023
Wallet of Satoshi is custodial, centralization has benefits.
7 cents is 0.1% fees. Is that "high fees"?
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53 sats \ 1 reply \ @BTCExecutor OP 8 Jun 2023
For the masses used to "free" venmo or zelle, yes it will probably seem high
I'm thinking in terms of barriers to mass adoption
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5 sats \ 0 replies \ @DarthCoin 8 Jun 2023
There's no such thing as free. Nobody says LN is free. Who said that doesn't know how LN works. And LN wasn't created to have "free" payments, but to scale bitcoin. Onchain is the vault, LN is the payment network. It have nothing to do with "be free". This is not a race, to have less fees than VISA, but to make them obsolete totally.
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10 sats \ 0 replies \ @1sats 8 Jun 2023
It sounds about right.
WOS and Phoenix (ACINQ) are well-connected nodes with many routes to your destination.
Since WOS is a custodial wallet, you do not have to pay the fee for the first hop. This is why it's the cheapest option (400ppm) of the three.
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35 sats \ 10 replies \ @DarthCoin 8 Jun 2023
A payment through LN depends on the route taken. If the route have 4 hops (4 forwarding nodes) that means each one will take a fee, bbased on the amount you send. If the route will have 6 hops, for sure will be more expensive than 4. Each node is charging its own fees for routing and the sender COULD NOT decide which rote exactly should take. The only thing can decide is the first hop, first peer with which is connected. But after that, is how routing protocol is calculating the route.
That means, if a cheap route do not have enough liquidity, will take the next expensive one, that could have more liquidity.
-Here I did last year a research in path finding, routes and fees with different wallets and destinations.
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265 sats \ 3 replies \ @petertodd 8 Jun 2023
Each node is charging its own fees for routing and the sender COULD NOT decide which rote exactly should take. The only thing can decide is the first hop, first peer with which is connected.
You are completely incorrect. Lightning is onion routed, at the source. The sender is 100% in control of how the payment is routed (modulo wallets like Phoenix, which trust a third party to do that routing for them; but that third party is 100% in control). Nodes in the middle don't even know the route the payment is going to take, let alone choose it.
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106 sats \ 2 replies \ @DarthCoin 8 Jun 2023
But you cannot decide manually the route, only if you do it yourself in a cli command, with route hints and be sure that those peers have enough liquidity. Those mobile apps cannot do that. I am totally right when I said that user cannot control the route.
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106 sats \ 1 reply \ @petertodd 8 Jun 2023
You the user aren't deciding that. But your wallet software is deciding that, at the source. And you can control that decision, eg with the max fee limit settings available in most wallets.
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53 sats \ 0 replies \ @DarthCoin 8 Jun 2023
Even if you have the option to put a max fee, that will not guarantee that the payment will go through. Will just fail with error "no route".
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0 sats \ 5 replies \ @BTCExecutor OP 8 Jun 2023
Interesting. Any idea why these 3 different wallets would use seemingly wildly different routes to the same destination within minutes of each other?
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10 sats \ 4 replies \ @DarthCoin 8 Jun 2023
They don't decide the route, they can decide only the first hop. Some of them could have some zero fee channels with other peers and that's why you could have a less fee, but that you don't know for sure, maybe tomorrow you will do again the same test and you will have totally reverse results, because the payment took another route. It's all about in THAT moment of the payment, how available are the routes. In LN there's no such thing as always a FIX fee.
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0 sats \ 1 reply \ @ek 8 Jun 2023
Because of onion routing, doesn't the sender decide every hop?
The sender has to encrypt the payload with the public key of every node in the route
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @DarthCoin 8 Jun 2023
Again, depends on his peers routes. A router could not decide manually exactly the route. The protocol decide.
Here is a very good presentation by Rene Pickhardt talking about path finding
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0 sats \ 1 reply \ @BTCExecutor OP 8 Jun 2023
Good idea, I will try again later and report
I could see this as alarming / annoying for new users. Another UE issue we need to overcome to reach more ppl
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @DarthCoin 8 Jun 2023
Why is alarming? Is normal. Fees on LN will always be variable. Don't make too much case for that.
And read my guides. I did a lot of testing in all these 10 years with Bitcoin and all these tests became guides. For example this one: https://darthcoin.substack.com/p/private-lightning-nodes https://darthcoin.substack.com/p/managing-lightning-node-liquidity
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @NoNameNeeded 8 Jun 2023
And more intriguing it's that you can send a payment from phoenix for an X fee and then try to send the same amount to the same destination just adjusting manually the fee and you will send it too, so, why they don't take less fee from the beginning
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