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I get your point about incentives, and I agree that LN works best when people act in their own interest. That said, I don’t think “supporting decentralization” and being selfish are mutually exclusive. Running a well-connected, reliable routing node can align both goals if it’s done sustainably.
On swaps and batching, that makes sense. I’m just trying to understand how much I can do without relying heavily on specific providers. My concern is more about concentration risk, I'd avoid that.
“LN isn’t for you if you want to avoid third parties”...
that’s a bit overstated. Yes, channels introduce counterparties, but there’s still a spectrum between:
- carefully selecting diverse peers and managing risk
- vs relying on a small number of large, semi-custodial hubs or services
For inbound liquidity specifically, I’m looking at options like:
- dual-funded channels / liquidity ads
- peerswap-style swaps with known peers
- circular rebalancing once I have some outbound capacity
I’m mainly trying to understand what people have found works in practice without defaulting to big LSPs.
On KYC: fair point about footprint, but that’s more of a personal tradeoff.
If you’ve actually run a routing node for a while, I’d be interested in what worked best for you in terms of getting inbound liquidity early on without overpaying in fees.
I’d be interested in what worked best for you in terms of getting inbound liquidity early on without overpaying in fees.
Whether you "overpay" in fees depends entirely on your expected earnings that this new inbound will earn for you
I've spend millions of sats on getting inbound, but the earnings have made those expenses worthwhile. LN node is a business, the sooner you look at it like a business, the sooner you'll correct your understanding and actually sustain a node long term. The vast majority of node-runners give up after they make a few bad bets. They blame "the network" and "centralization" and "bad design" before they admit that they didn't understand the game they're playing enough to be profitable at it.
there’s still a spectrum between: carefully selecting diverse peers and managing risk and relying on a small number of large, semi-custodial hubs or services
I think the distinction depends on choice vs. force. You choose your peers and you choose which swap providers to use. Furthermore, you can be a peer yourself! Or run your own swap service! The problem happens when you are forced to rely on services that are "approved" in a top-down manner whether thru licenses or state-sponsored certificates, etc. The fact there are relatively few swap providers is due to economies of scale and specialization, not because the state only gives out a handful of licenses or some top-down reason.
I’m mainly trying to understand what people have found works in practice without defaulting to big LSPs.
Consider that the big LSPs have earned their place because the service they provide is actually good (i.e. the free market has selected which services to use on your behalf)
But you will find a competitive edge using any means of getting cheap liquidity (again cheap is relative to expected earnings).
If you could analyze the network and find the optimal strategy without getting your feet wet, then there would be no arbitrage left to exploit in the network. Your moat in the network is earned thru trail and error and having better information than others.
Are you moonlighting as Darth's sidekick 🤣🤣🤣
Have fun going broke! BTC does not need your support. If it did, it would not have made it this far. Be selfish, and the network (including your piece of it) will thrive!
Yea, but why would you want to? Lightning is a batch payment protocol. It lets you make many offchain payments that "batch" into a single large onchain payment. This happens when you close channels or do swaps. Swaps are better since you can keep using the channel. You can also swap in/out to other assets like LBTC which have better onchain privacy options than BTC.
Then LN isn't for you. Every channel you open is adding a third-party into your relationship. Your channel peers can censor you, they can more easily probe your node for channel balances than other peers that are 2+ hops away from you, they can close your channel at the worst time making you wait for weeks or pay high fees. The way you mitigate this is by choosing your peers wisely (trustful) or putting measures in place to limit your exposure (watchtowers, redundant node hardware, tuning your node parameters to limit attacks, etc) or having so many peers that you become the centralizing force (hub and spoke).
Start with you. Do you use LN already? You can probably save some sats compared to using a LSP or wallet with high fees. However, you'll have to learn and take on responsibility for your sats/channels in ways that are hidden from normal LN users.
Use the sats you save on fees to pay for an AI subscription. LN is complex and full of edge cases, its difficult to keep it all in your head (even for an expert). LLMs can hold that context easily and they can tell you exactly what to run to achieve your LN goals.
Have fun going broke. Onchain BTC records will exist forever and running an LN node has a high onchain footprint. Just wait until some tyrant takes power, and you don't want to be the low-hanging fruit when the next executive order 6102 sends the gooberment goons after you and your sats!