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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.
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.
that’s a bit overstated. Yes, channels introduce counterparties, but there’s still a spectrum between:
For inbound liquidity specifically, I’m looking at options like:
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.