Lightning Node Management
Lightning Node Management
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Merchant

Aimed for receiving payments, focuses on inbound liqudity

Capital requirement

  • minimal to buy incoming channels
  • temporarily high to create incoming capacity from channels opened

Channels and peers

  • few (2-3) channels with well connected and capitalized nodes
  • connect to nodes on the Bos list
  • see existing fee settings on Amboss / 1ml.com
  • Check node stability on Lightning Web

Liquidity

  • mostly remote

Uptime

  • high, but not perfect
  • unavailability affects sales

Management

  • Loop out (Autoloop) to empty existing channels
  • Close and Reopen when channels are filled up
    • a channel open (and close) is not more expensive than using Loop given :
      • have onchain liquidity for more channels (or splice in in the future) or
      • can afford the channel downtime between peers to close and reopen
  • Buy further inbound liquidity
  • Use liquidity ads to buy inbound
  • Try Amboss Magma
  • Place bids on Lightning Pool
  • Advertise to receive inbound
    • On-chain or off-chain sweeps may be necessary if Lightning wallet balance becomes too large
    • An off-chain sweep can improve your privacy as well as give you inbound liquidity

Examples

  • Self hosted node connected to a local or remote BTCPayServer
  • BTCPayServer on a VPS (acceptable with low amount of funds)
  • Fully hosted solutions (trusted) - eg. Voltage
  • Coming: Greenlight from Blockstream

Special cases

  • Accepting donations
  • Offer to pay onchain for high value payments (miner fee < 0.5-1%)
    BTCPayServer setting
  • can progress to a Routing node as the number of connections and capital grows