why is my local balance changing without purpose \ stacker news ~lightning

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why is my local balance changing without purpose

516 sats \ 9 comments \ @trieska 10 Dec lightning

I am running LND + RTL and albyHub. I have open just one channel, doing that in albyhub. Everything is working well, I can send and receive sats, I did also connect AlbyGO and amethys . I can zap or receive zaps in amethys.

I did find out that my local balance is change and I did not make any transaction. So I did start to take screeshots from RTL to remember more details.

Here is history :

Between update 119 and 126 I did not make any transaction and as you can see just LOCAL balance is change. Then I did send and receive some. But between update 130 and 131 LOCAL balance change again without purpose.

What is source of that? Is something wrong with my LND? Should I be worried?

thank you very much for help to understand and solve this "problem"

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1671 sats \ 3 replies \ @DarthCoin 10 Dec

The commit fees are changing. If/when mempool fees are fluctuating, also the commit fees will increase or decrease and that will be affected in your channels "can send".

Another aspect that you should take in consideration is the "buffer" kept in each channel when is about to be depleted: https://github.com/lightningnetwork/lnd/blob/6dea86428d031171af30119e3f6599820dc5454a/lnwallet/channel.go#L3803-L3815

For those cases, if you really want to empty that channel, you have to go slowly with smaller amounts, going closer and closer to the last sat you can send. But with Alby Hub you cannot select a specific channel to make a payment (yet). You will need to use another node management software like Thunderhub, RTL, or Zeus that allow doing that.

Is something wrong with my LND? Should I be worried?

No. This is how LN it works. That's why we always recommend to NOT open small tiny channels where this difference can be seen easily. For a larger channel it will be insignificant change.

21 sats \ 2 replies \ @kilianbuhn 10 Dec

The commit fees are changing.

makes sense but is so unintuitive for people who think of Lightning like a balance 😂

9 sats \ 1 reply \ @DarthCoin 10 Dec

Yes and that is not all LOL. We have channel reserves, that not all wallets are displaying it correctly. We have anchor reserves also. We have buffer reserves... We have commit fees fluctuating LOL I wonder what more "fees" we will have in 2025 and beyond 😂😂😂 Can't we just have a single % for everything, clear and displayed so all users can understand it?

21 sats \ 0 replies \ @ZezzebbulTheMysterious 11 Dec

One thing I would add is if you prefer a 'stable' balance, use CLN. CLN will account for every sat in channels, but not on chain conditions. LND will account for on chain conditions, but it makes it hard to observe the absolute balance of your wallet from RTL or Thunderhub. I believe this is also due to the need for LND to produce anchor outputs, this is still experimental opt-in CLN so your balance should only have changes related to new channels or channel fees, or closes.

For example, this makes it easier to observe total routing fees from an absolute balance in RTL/CLN vs Thunderhub/LND.

Both nodes have their trade offs for UX; Your sats are safe either way, but both pieces of software behave differently.

64 sats \ 0 replies \ @ek 10 Dec

You might be interested in reading Rethinking Lightning if you're really interested in the details:

Channel liquidity is a problem, but it is also deceptive. When you have 100k sats of inbound liquidity you would think you could receive up to 100k sats, but this isn't the case, often you can't actually receive any. This is because of on-chain fees, when a payment is being made in lightning you are creating pre-signed transactions that have outputs for every in-flight payment, these outputs cost potential on-chain fees and the high on-chain fees go the more it eats into your liquidity. After we've solved most of our force close issues Mutiny this has been number one support request. Even if you do everything right, understand liquidity and have enough for your payment, sometimes it still won't work because on-chain fees are too high. This is always really discouraging because isn't the whole point of lightning to not have to pay on-chain fees? Fundamentally, all current lightning channels could become entirely useless if on-chain fees went high enough because a single payment would require too many reserves. Obviously this is hyperbolic, but I hope I am getting the point across that on-chain fees don't just effect the opening and closing costs of channels, even if you are a diligent node runner that only opens channels when fees are low, that is not enough, your channels need to be large enough to pay for the on-chain fees of each HTLC at any future on-chain fee rate. As on-chain fees go up and up this problem will only get worse.

21 sats \ 0 replies \ @rizful_com 10 Dec

Great choice of channel peer ;) !

I remember having this exact question when I started on the Lightning Network.

We answer that question here: https://rizful.com/docs/balances-and-capacities#outbound-capacity ... under "But why does my outbound capacity keep changing slightly?"

21 sats \ 0 replies \ @anon 10 Dec

Have you checked for onchain fee changes during 130 and 131? Some hours ago there were some oscilating onchain fees.

The balance on LND (and therefore) RTL will be calculated by LND taking into consideration the current onchain fees, and they have been oscillating a little bit today, for example block #874115 had fees up to 855sat/vB, while block #874116 had fees up to 262sat/vB.

Best, Jean-Paul Alby Support Team getalby.com

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @DesertDave 10 Dec

I find that NWC is really easiest to use on Alby hub. A lot of this is such a mystery to me.

29 sats \ 0 replies \ @DarthCoin 10 Dec

offtopic answer

A lot of this is such a mystery to me.

ofc you are busy with assmilkers instead of learning more about bitcoin. I wonder who will be the loser in the end...