Unconventional LN node management strategies \ stacker news ~bitcoin

Unconventional LN node management strategies

3 sats \ 2 comments \ @south_korea_ln 28 Oct 2021 bitcoin

What are your unusual ways of keeping the sats flow between your channels?

I've found that opening a channel to an end-of-chain LN node that deals directly with a local "fiat" business is more useful than initially thought. At first, I've had to worry about how to rebalance that channel as it only flows in one direction, but now, I've found that the channels that are in charge of the second to last hop (i.e. the ones that send me the sats before I forward them to that end-of-chain channel) have become much more active. Mostly big nodes that didn't do much rebalancing, but now that I get them lots of micro-transaction routing, they seem to be doing their fair share of rebalancing on my behalf. I have deactivated by rebalancing scripts for the last 10 days, yet the channels involved in these specific payments remain balanced and/or active without my intervention.

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0 sats \ 1 reply \ @DarthCoin 28 Oct 2021

My 1st LN node was in 2019. I was quite obsessed with rebalancing. Now I see almost useless. I don't it anymore. Why would I spend my sats doing that, when I just need to take care of the total liquidity to be more or less equal and play a bit with fees for specific channels? So now I just take a look in Thunderhub at the "Liquidity report", as a general view. If the outbound and inbound total liquidity is more or less equal and enough max in/out to route good txs, then you really don't need rebalancing with scripts and all that crazy stuff. Sometimes those scripts can really fucked up your channels and start closing them, for no reason. What comes around - goes around. I mean what enters from a channel, goes out on another. If you take care to have enough good connections and good fees, nothing to worry, you will route anyway. I keep my fees quiet low, my fee base is 0 for small channels, and 21msats for bigger. I keep ppm between 21 and 42 and barely I raise it (depend on the peer). My other policy is to not close any channel and keep them open as much is possible. I will close channels ONLY if the peer is not responsive for long time, is offline/zombie mode long time. I do not think that a channel that today or in 2-3 months doesn't have traffic is a "wasting time". I think with LN you need to have a lot of patience and wait. LN is a growing organism, you need to feed it and wait to grow, to expand. Then you will have results.

If you open a channel with me, I will put immediately the fees to 0base and 21ppm (see my bio to find my node)

1 sat \ 0 replies \ @south_korea_ln OP 28 Oct 2021

Thanks for sharing your experience. I agree with the idea that rebalancing for the sake of rebalancing isn't useful. I'll add your node to my list. I've some sats stuck in an Ask on Loop that don't seem to get filled, so i might want to reallocate them soon.