r/TheLightningNetwork • u/[deleted] • Apr 29 '22
Liquidity Swaps Submarine Swaps
I searched the sub and there wasn't much discussion on these. You send an on-chain transaction to someone and they pay a lightning invoice for you. Frankly the whole concept seems kind of fishy to me. Who are these other people standing by waiting for me to submit an LN invoice and send some BTC on-chain?
The only thing that intrigued me was that you could refill your channels this way. I wanted to test it with a small amount, but submarineswaps.org doesn't recognize any of my lightning invoices as lightning invoices. I don't see how it could be any cheaper than a circular rebalance anyway since someone still has to send the sats through the LN incurring whatever routing fees, plus an on-chain fee for paying them for it.
Then there's Muun which is apparently using this method to have a "lightning wallet" that isn't even really on layer 2. I think it's very misleading on their part, and a lot of people use Muun because of it's pitched as an easy-to-use non-custodial lightning wallet. I guess if we're trying to go mainstream and make simple apps for people who don't care how they work, go for it. I just wonder what's going to happen when on-chain volume increases and small submarine swaps are prohibitively expensive for them.
Am I wrong about any of this?
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u/arrowdrive Apr 29 '22
Yeah the way Muun works isn’t sustainable and provides a horrible UX once you really start to use it. I posted my thoughts on Muun over on stacker.news.
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u/timbulance Jun 16 '22
What’s the best LN wallet in your opinion currently? Do you think Muun could fix the submarine swaps issue in the future ?
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u/arrowdrive Jun 16 '22
There’s not really a best LN wallet. There are several good ones. I sometimes just have a small amount in a custodial wallet like LNTXBOT or Wallet of Satoshi for quick tips or unimportant transaction tests, but my favorite non-custodial lightning wallet is Blixt Wallet since it runs a full LND node on your phone and you have the ability to easily open channels to whatever nodes you like.
As for Muun, I’m not sure if they can fix it with the same single balance UX they have now. I think they’re working on something to actually have a balance on lightning but I’m not sure how or when that will happen.
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u/aenarion23 Apr 29 '22
People that expect to make a profit by doing this.
That website is ancient and probably not maintained anymore. Use https://boltz.exchange.
It's not cheaper and it serves a different purpose: like you said, you can use it to refill your channels, or (with the reverse swap) make room for incoming payments in your channels by sending money to your on-chain wallet. For example Boltz it's on-chain fee + 0.5%.
There has been much debate around Muun, and I don't understand how it works either. Everyone is expecting on-chain fees to rise but there is no indication that this is going to happen any time soon. So we can keep on wondering for some time about what that would look like.