Using a self-custodial lightning wallet for the first time can be tricky. I learned some things the hard way and I want to share them with you. Here are some things you should know before you use a self-custodial lightning wallet :
- Don’t deposit your sats without checking the channel status of your wallet. If your wallet can automatically open channels, then you’re good to go.
- Watch out for the fees. Some wallets charge a high fee of a few thousand sats to open channels instantly. If you choose to open channels manually, some channels require a minimum amount of sats to lock (you can’t use them unless you close the channel), usually between 5k-10k sats.
- When you manually open a channel to a public lightning node, you need to fund the channel with your btc and pay for the on-chain fee. Choose the node you connect to carefully. Some nodes don’t give their inbound liquidity for free. Sometimes they can close or force close the channel and make you lose some sats for the on-chain fee.
- The capacity of a lightning channel is not unlimited. It is limited by the sats you use to fund it. So you can’t receive more sats than the amount you used to fund it, unless you buy channel liquidity from a node that provides it.
- It’s better to avoid using force close on your open channels. Try to use regular close and wait for the cooperative closing. Only use force close if you really have to, for example, if the node is inactive, unmanaged, or too expensive. And while you’re waiting for the channel to close, don’t clear your wallet app data or uninstall it. The channel needs to refund your sats and it needs that data to sync your wallet balance on-chain.
I hope this helps, and feel free to post about any other things that I may have missed about self-custodial lightning wallets.⚡😊⚡