Still few Lightning nodes operators knows that are two types of LN nodes:
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“public” - with announced channels, visible on the LN explorer, used mostly for routing payments across the network and “earn” fees.
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“private” - with un-announced channels, not visible on the LN explorer, used mostly by mobile node wallets, private nodes, LN wallet providers.
Running a LN node is not all about routing payments and earn fees. Is also about having a more private mode to transact and without having to participate with a lot of liquidity on public channels.
There are also two concepts of “private routing”, by trampoline channels (Electrum, Phoenix) and SBW private routing. That means you do not have to depend all the time of public channels/nodes to route your payment.
DarthCoin, already shut down all his public routing nodes and goes FULL ON PRIVATE NODES. One of them is Blixt mobile Node Wallet and also SBW. Apart from these is still running a desktop node, but is a simple CLN node, un-announced (private), where can connect also all mobile LN nodes and do more stuff.
But no routing anymore, as he explains in this article.