For people who have/are running nodes, are there any strategies that have been most effective for you for earning routing fees?
From my very limited routing experience so far it seems there are a few main questions:
- Who should I open a channel to? And how much capacity should it be?
- How much should I set the fees of that channel given the tradeoff of routing traffic and profitability?
- How do I manage the ongoing operations of my node - ie circular rebalancing - to keep liquidity on both ends and routes flowing?
Just thinking about things generally, it seems liquidity would flow in some sort of network loop:
- Fiat -> Exchanges -> Wallet and Point of Sale Providers -> Businesses/Apps that accept LN -> Wallet and Point of Sale Providers -> Exchanges -> Fiat
Am I thinking about this correctly?
Connecting with the "big nodes" I can see that I route payments when my fees are low enough (but this seems like a race to the bottom) - for example why would Kraken route many hops through my node when it can go direct to WalletOfSatoshi (other than lower fees)
And connecting with "small nodes" it seems we are at best an "outer hop alternative route" of sorts for any of Exchanges, Wallets, Businesses?
Has anyone who has had routing success be willing to share their experiences and strategies?
Or are there other challenges/advice I am not yet thinking of?