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LN Hosted Channels in OBW [Questions]
110 sats \ 5 comments \ @zeus 8 Jun 2023 bitcoin
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In OBW (Open Bitcoin Wallet) there's an option to use a Hosted Channel and acquire a channel with provided inbound liquidity with one of these 3 providers: SATM, Jiraiya, and Ergvein
My questions are:
    1. If I wish to use Blixt mobile wallet or Zap desktop wallet and connect to the providers mentioned above, will I get the same hosted channel functionality? Or it can only be achieved using OBW?
    1. Are there any other free hosted channel providers beside the ones I mentioned above? And what is the best way to discover & connect with them please?
    1. With a hosted channel using OBW, the user benefits from inbound liquidity right on the spot, but how to acquire outbound liquidity on such channels?
I'd appreciate your feedback and insight on this topic, and thank you in advance for your support!
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110 sats \ 2 replies \ @fanis 9 Jun 2023
Great questions!
  1. You need a wallet compatible with Hosted Channels to use them. As far as I know that's only OBW and Valet right now (SBW still works, but as it's not maintained anymore and OBW is essentially the same thing, I'd advise using OBW).
  2. Besides the 3 listed on the OBW app, I don't know any publicly advertised hosted channels provider. Ultimately anyone running a Lightning node can be a hosted channel provider. For example, there is the poncho plugin for that on Core Lightning. Some people can for example provide hosted channels this way, but only for friends and family.
  3. To have outbound liquidity from the get go on a hosted channel you'd need to pay your provider this amount, because having funds on your side means you "own" them (and there's no reason for the provider to give them to you for free). Since it requires a payment, you can either pay for this outbound liquidity with Lightning from a different wallet (which is equivalent to getting your hosted channel, and then sending yourself a payment though it), or pay on-chain, in which case you might just as well open a real Lightning channel since it also takes an on-chain transaction and naturally provides you with outbound liquidity.
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @zeus OP 10 Jun 2023
Thank you sir for this detailed response, and I hope this discussion benefits the community, and especially new members who want to learn more about the LN ecosystem.
If I may ask, could you please elaborate more on my 2nd question? Right now I'm looking at a hosted channel with 500k sats of inbound capacity opened with SATM at zero cost using OBW
How do I get some outbound liquidity (preferably using LN)? Do I send this hosted channel some sats from another LN wallet, say WoS or Phoenix, then spend it (I could send it back to my own wallet that I sent from, for example) and therefore acquire outbound liquidity?
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @DarthCoin 9 Jun 2023
And great answers!
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @DarthCoin 10 Jun 2023
We need to get onboard more well known merchants to offer HC. It's a win-win situation for both parties. Users need to spend sats easily, merchants needs customers to pay in sats. These HC, yes, are custodial, but are more like a credit line open with that merchant. If you already are going to spend your sats from that channel with the merchant, make sense to use HC offered by the same. No need to be big channels, 500k - 1 M sats I think is enough to start.
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @DarthCoin 9 Jun 2023
Ask more questions about HC here https://t.me/hostedchannels Read this proposal guide I wrote and be yourself the provider for HC. https://github.com/Darth-Coin/Poncho-OBW-testing
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