110 sats \ 2 replies \ @fanis 9 Jun 2023 \ on: LN Hosted Channels in OBW [Questions] bitcoin
Great questions!
- 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).
- 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.
- 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.
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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And great answers!
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