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Lightning Node Categories & Customization

1328 sats \ 8 comments \ @andyleroy 21 Jul 2022 bitcoin

⚡ Product Announcement for the Exponential Layers lightning analytics and explorer platform:

See an evolving directory of lightning nodes by category and customize your node here

@Voltage shared a great post about brand and identity on the Lightning Network last month.

@kr had one of many fantastic conversations with Alex Leishman of River Financial, highlighting the continued exponential growth of the Lightning Network.

@sn, like many of you have mentioned, offers great signal to noise ratio and discussion, and thanks to everyone’s input and help, I have a number of fantastic resources to continue getting through in my journey of node routing.

From all of these resources (and many more), it seems clear that we are very much in the early days of the Lightning Network, and as someone looking to understand the analytics behind the lightning network and operate a node, I am interested in answering questions of:

What types of nodes are operating on the Lightning Network?
Who are the big players? What kind of capacity, channel count, and volume are they doing?
Who should I open channels with? Where does liquidity flow?

Exponential Layers now offers one more data dimension for analyzing the lightning network and channel partners in the form of Node categories:

You can claim your node and select your node category (Exchange, Wallet, Point of Sale, Infrastructure, LN App or Business, or Router) to help identify yourself on the network.
Browse other nodes/peers by category and look at all of the nodes who classify as an exchange, wallet, etc.
You can (hopefully) have a bit of fun with the process - download the images you use for your Twitter account (avatar and banner image), and upload them to your Node profile for a fully customizable page.

In many senses, the channels we create today are like creating the physical connections of the early internet days, so why not have a bit of fun while we spend some sats.

I would love to hear any feedback you have on these new features. Are there some additional customization or dimensions by which you’d like to see nodes and categories broken out? What kind of category specific analytics would be helpful for you?

As one last incentive to help use these new features, anyone who verifies their node and leaves an email or twitter handle by 8/1 will receive a free upcoming copy of an upcoming “July state of Lightning report” to be published in early August, and be featured in the article if you prefer (I'll reach out to anyone with a publicly verified node prior).

To the next 1,000 BTC in capacity ⚡📈

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201 sats \ 2 replies \ @Porto 21 Jul 2022 freebie

Does anyone know a good website / video explaining the major differences between the lighting implementations out there? I'm getting started and finding it hard to choose between lnd, c-lightning and eclair.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @melvincarvalho 21 Jul 2022

RGB is almost here and may be the next evolution of BOLT lightning

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @andyleroy OP 21 Jul 2022

I don't personally have any great insight here, but this thread offers some background: https://www.reddit.com/r/lightningnetwork/comments/u2zknw/clightning_vs_lnd/

For both Exponential Layers and my personal routing node, I use Voltage as a managed service to deal with all of the heavy lifting, uptime, and other perks of a managed service, before I fully understand the ins and outs at the implementation level and ever go to a personal instance. Fwiw, my experience with LND has been great, it has nicely documented gRPC APIs and it has many products that I can run locally connecting to remote (RTL) and out of the box on Voltage (Thunderhub, LNBits)

200 sats \ 2 replies \ @kr 21 Jul 2022

This update looks cool, what is the plan for categorizing and adding new Lightning nodes over time?

I suspect it will be a tedious task to continually add new merchants, apps, exchanges, etc. I wonder if it makes sense to financially incentivize node operators to connect their nodes and do the heavy lifting for you?

100 sats \ 1 reply \ @andyleroy OP 21 Jul 2022

Thank you, that's the question top of mind for me.

There are some dual sided marketplace dynamics and incentives at work here - I suspect people/companies will spend the time to verify and customize their node when it offers some sort of tangible benefit for them. Bitfinex doesn't need to be verified on Exponential Layers yet, but for many smaller nodes this can offer another way to get their node and customized details and links out there.

And I'll be doing more direct outreach, sales, marketing, newsletters, articles to offer more in the way of distribution benefits to anyone who is willing to verify and customize their node early.

I'm hesitant to do pay-for-play initially - it already costs hundreds of dollars per month for Azure & MongoDB hosting and to collect what is now >100 million node history data points in the last ~2 months. The backend setup for classifying and estimating node categories without verifications is a one line update so some of the larger players are 'seeded' and will be continually linked to their public nodes to give everyone else the insight.

I think that there can be great value to incoming research firms, banks, etc who want to understand the network and category level analytics - among other dimensions - as they onboard or adopt lightning, and I'd like to get that proved out before spending too much more to build a 'verified' marketplace.

But absolutely my top question is what people and companies are/will be willing to pay for with data/analytics - or any tools, features, etc. And I'm building a couple more of these avenues in the way of finding product market fit and adding unique perspective to differentiate from already great platforms like 1ML, Amboss, etc. With bitcoin buying opportunities at 20k, I'd love to get cash flow positive asap :)

I know you talk with more businesses and leaders in the lightning space than anyone else, so I'd love to hear anything you'd be willing to share on what would be most valuable for you or any companies you talk with.

100 sats \ 0 replies \ @andyleroy OP 21 Jul 2022

One more 'market' I'd love to brainstorm on is a hypothetical (for now):

If I am a Product Manager at Truist, Bank of America, Chase, etc tasked with researching and looking to adopt lightning technology at the firm, what would that process look like? Are there articles, how-to's, best practices - research on what others have done, reasons to adopt - and analytics on volume, fees, capacity? What other products and services are other competing banks using? What would my relationship be with merchants in this new system?

I don't claim to have any answers here and there are a lot of conversations I need to get started, but I think these types of questions will be top of mind for many financial firms and banks over the coming years...

100 sats \ 1 reply \ @TheWildHustle 21 Jul 2022

Good Lord, love these builders. I have a Voltage Node with no open channels....just saw the updated Amboss Magma display.....I'm completely blown away. Thanks for making it easier for humble plebs to participate in the network/fight for humanity. Now here are your sats!

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @andyleroy OP 21 Jul 2022

Thank you!