At its most barebones, an LSP can just be a regular LN peer that a user has a channel with and relies on for routing & liquidity management. 

But yes, logic could be built into/on top of your node to try a payment, and if it fails, retry through a specific LSP. Or, you could have a list of peers you can reliably pay, that you pay directly, and if your destination is not in that list, you use the LSP to access the wider network. 


SachinMeier

bitcoin

Stacker News Roundtable #2 - LSPs

Is there any future with LSPs providing a fallback service? 

i.e. when payments fail, when nodes go offline, maintaining channels etc, like watchtowers but better.

We all want to use our nodes whenever possible, but failed payments are just the worst. It’d be great if we could revert to LSPs for that scenario, without needing to use a new node or faff with setup of new channels after the fact.