Biggest Mistake You've Made with Lightning \ stacker news ~bitcoin

pull down to refresh

Biggest Mistake You've Made with Lightning

594 sats \ 11 comments \ @SatsMate 18 Aug bitcoin_beginners

Hi All - I'm not super experienced on the technical side, but I'm curious what is your biggest mistake when it comes to lightning & how much money have you lost? I think my biggest mistake recently was I had a force channel closure (so there was an on-chain fee), and then given the amount was only $100, I reactivated the lightning channel, but I couldn't send all the sats (4K were tied up).

So then I did an on-chain transaction again (total of 3 for a balance of $100). I ended up paying $20-30 in fees. I know it is small, but I wasn't too familiar with the app, and I didn't want too many stranded sats. That leaves me to question, what has been your biggest issue running a lightning channel, or just using a wallet in general? I look at this as the cost of tuition, but it is never fun losing money...

view all related items

22 sats \ 2 replies \ @itsMoro 19 Aug

ive lost some sats for sure to brutal force closes, and i also think i had a utxo disappear on me with CLN node but just couldnt figure it out ( wasnt huge but still scary as fuck). moreso ive lost so much time fucking with it...if i could go back in time and just be chillin with a blixt wallet node or something and never triedmore. its really only for the reckless as the saying goes.

so, this is me when people that have only used phoenix complain about a .4% fee for sending 😅

https://m.stacker.news/46805

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @SatsMate OP 19 Aug

haha, so a huge time sink and headache. Is there a rhyme or reason for force closures, or is it just up to the wallet? I know one way to prevent force closures is to actively use the wallet and lightning channels.

21 sats \ 0 replies \ @itsMoro 19 Aug

oh there can be many reasons. i had a time where i used my node stupidly to fire up a mutinee wallet...that seemed to cause force closes to blast through my node. another time i decided to use CLBoss and that like instantly caused some force closes ( not sure why). then there are complete mystery ones that i just dont have enough info to or knowledge to figure out. so yes huge time sink and headache. i think blixt or zeus embedded with a few private channels is as far as most need to venture into lightning land.

21 sats \ 1 reply \ @Msd0457890 19 Aug

I have been working with Bitcoin for a while, but on several occasions I have lost large amounts of sats due to my negligence and lack of prudence.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @SatsMate OP 19 Aug

anything specific that you would avoid? One thing I've found is I need to minimize the amount of wallets I use. I can't keep track of them all - and then they end up force closing.

21 sats \ 1 reply \ @OT 19 Aug

I've had some unintended forced closes using LND during those big fee spikes. I also tried CLN and didn't realize there's currently a problem opening up unannounced channels to LND nodes so I shut it down.

I still would like at some point to run my own LN node, but for now LSP's are good enough.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @SatsMate OP 19 Aug

Good thing now is since fees are 3 sats per vbyte so it is somewhat affordable to open, close and experiment with lightning.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Satoshi__Nakamoto 19 Aug

20 to 30 dollars is huge fee amount converting your btc lightning to chain is way expensive. I haven't done any mistake in lN