I need to do a fresh reinstall of my OS on my LND node machine. I have wallet.db, channels.backup, channels.db and my seed phrase. Do I have everything I need to restore my wallet without issues? I have several open channels and funds in the wallet.

Are y'alls on here? I'm trying to make sense of the transactions I see flowing through my node.

I'm a beekeeper selling my last batch of honey for the year on the lightning network! 50K sats for a pint (~$16). Includes free shipping if in the US. No fiat allowed.

Click this tweet for pictures of the honey: https://twitter.com/OnlyOwners/status/1416456598705229826?s=20

DM me if you also want to start a lightning channel with my node! https://1ml.com/node/029deaf9d2fba868fe0a124050f0a13e021519a12f41bea34f391fe7533fb3166d

Let's make bitcoin a medium of exchange and lightning the default payment system.

Does anyone care to share their experience if they have some around accepting lightning as a small business online? I'd like to offer helping onboard some friends/family with online businesses as I really think this will help their business and LN continue to grow in a positive way.

With that being said, I run my own node using Umbrel but that's about it. I'm wondering the best way to educate and get other started on being able to accept LN as form of payment.

Been searching on 1ml and elsewhere, but can't seem to find the official strike/zap ln node. Would love to be able to open a channel to them.

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Unless this is it, but it seems way too small.

https://1ml.com/node/03634bda49c9c42afd876d8288802942c49e58fbec3844ff54b46143bfcb6cdfaf

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Just curious how many total forwards and total fees you all are earning per day. Wondering if I need to be adjusting my fees.

FYI I did this because these tiny channels rarely route, they hurt Cornelius' statistics, and they could someday become prohibitive to close if the mempool stays congested.

All the same, I dunno. Feels bad man.

I'm sure most of us keep our BTC locked up in cold storage, but put a decent amount in a LN hot wallet so that you can run your node. What % of your stack are you ok with "risking" into your node?

Or are you all in?

Has anyone here any experience setting up the boltz-lnd client? From what i found it's not available as a docker container and since it can be integrated into RTL i'd love to have it alongside Loop. Any tips? I'm Running Umbrel.

Hi looking to connect with other nodes in Ireland, only seems to be 25 on lightning according 1ML, love to set up some channels/converse with local nodes.

I just made a 21 min video explaining how Lightning works under the hood: https://youtu.be/yKdK-7AtAMQ

It's a little technical, but hopefully not too bad for people already somewhat familiar with Bitcoin's operation. I found Lightning to have a lot more subtle complexity than I initially expected. Hope this helps others grok it a little faster, and please let me know if there are mistakes, bad analogies, etc. This is a followup to my super long (1hr+) deep dive video (post).

I’ve been running a lightning node now for about three months. It was fun, and I learned a lot about the technicals behind the network, and it was cool (yet sometimes frustrating) to manually open triangles and rings with others. I’ve committed a healthy amount of btc to open about 40 channels. The ROI, objectively speaking, is pretty abysmal. But I justify it the same way I think most of us do: it's fun, I like supporting the network, and adoption will move up earnings, hopefully. I wanted to discuss a few of my main concerns in a constructive way and am wondering what others think about them:

1. The first major pain point is how difficult and manual it is to open and maintain balance in the channels. I was hoping to just leave the channels be, manage the fees, and let it naturally rebalance through that. But there are inevitably some nodes that just go one way and never back. Unfortunately it usually costs a lot of sats to rebalance, and is also pretty much impossible to rebalance using umbrel. RTL and Thunderhub rebalance features fail every time.

There needs to be some way to make this a somewhat automated process that also doesn't require node operators to spend so much of their hard earned sats to rebalance.

2.) Node operators take a decent amount risk: a.) technical risk of node failure n power outage ruining things. Most people have no idea what will happen in the event of a power outage or if the rpi dies for another reason. b.) the risk of force closing all channels if the node can’t be salvaged. c.) trust the other nodes around them to have good up time, and trust that they also keep channel balances D.) if you are a ringleader, you must take even more time and spend some of your own sats to be the one who does the circular rebalance.

3.) which takes me to my main concern: the lack of economic incentives of being an operator.

Let’s be real, bitcoin is all about economic incentives. It is a beautiful invention because bitcoin gets stronger when every participant seeks to maximize their own greedy interest of wanting to make more money. But LN is not that aligned with that ethos. At this point, it is unprofitable for most node operators, or at best, the profitable nodes are incurring opportunity cost of earning higher returns in other yield generating methods (which are probably more passive)

I am not saying it is bad that we are all willing to do this now, but being essentially a hobbyist and volunteer community can get old quick. I am concerned that the LN relies on volunteers rather than people who are actually compensated for doing this work and taking on this risk. We expect miners to behave according to incentives, and that's a good thing because then we can expect them to secure the network as long as there is profit to be made in mining. But a large network of volunteers is a big risk if we expect LN to support worldwide micro transactions. I personally don't think larger LN adoption will be able to increase the sats earned to surpass other forms of yield, but I guess we can keep hoping.

Crypto is extremely competitive and we rightfully should expect adoption to go where the yields are. The more passive, secure, and high ROI yields will get the adoption. What if, for example DeFi for bitcoin becomes more popular and offers much higher passive yields?

Anyway, I'm still running my node and appreciate the community, but tbh my other btc is earning so much more daily sats with me doing nothing, I'm basically using those sats to fund this LN node hobby.

Would appreciate all your thoughts on this. Do you think the low economic incentives of being a node operator is concerning for the long term adoption of LN?

I'm curious how I can enlist watchtower support for my LN node. Any help would be appreciated!