06bc1a977d

lightning

ANTARIKSH NODE — WEEK 1 ROUTING ANALYSIS REPORT

I updated the table and data markdown and in the meantime lost editing access, so I reposted it for clarity.


deleted by author

Reposted here with proper formatting https://stacker.news/items/1317110/r/06bc1a977d


10 days of micro-drains (100–1500 SATs) to analyze routing behavior

Overview
========

For 10 days, I sent controlled HTLCs (100–1500 SATs) from my node to Breez and logged before/after channel balances to measure:

*   How routing varies with HTLC size
*   Whether channels develop “roles”
*   Liquidity drift over time
*   Mission Control path preferences
    
No fee changes, no rebalancing — pure observation.

Channels:

*   **ACINQ** — strong outbound
*   **Kappa** — micro-flow path
*   **Stroom** — inbound reservoir / corridor endpoint
    

📆 10-Day Drain Summary
=======================

| Day | Drain (sat)| Channel |
|---|---|---|
| 0 | 2000 | Kappa |
| 1 | 2000 | ACINQ |
| 2 | 1000 | Kappa |
| 3 | 500 | ACINQ |
| 4 | 1500 | ACINQ |
| 5 | 100 | Kappa |
| 6 | 200 | Kappa |
| 7 | 300 | Kappa |
| 8 | 1000 | ACINQ |
| 9 | 700 | ACINQ |
| 10 | 1500 | ACINQ |


🎯 Routing Threshold Identified
===============================

≤ 300 sats   → Kappa  
≥ 500 sats   → ACINQ  

Behavior stabilized by Day 3–4.

📈 Drain Size vs Selected Channel
=================================

```
Drain | Path
------+-------------------------------
100   | ████████ Kappa
200   | ████████ Kappa
300   | ████████ Kappa
500   |         ████████ ACINQ
700   |         ████████ ACINQ
1000  |         ████████ ACINQ
1500  |         ████████ ACINQ
```

🔄 Organic Routing (ACINQ ↔ Me ↔ Stroom)
========================================

Mission Control consistently used my node on this corridor:

```
Day | Route                     | Amount
----+---------------------------+---------
1.5 | ACINQ → Me → Stroom       | 400,204
1.5 | ACINQ → Me → Stroom       | 217,030
2.5 | ACINQ → Me → Stroom       | 20,061
2.5 | ACINQ → Me → Stroom       | 64,121
3.5 | Stroom → Me → ACINQ       | 100,051
4.5 | ACINQ → Me → Stroom       | 51,256
6.5 | ACINQ → Me → Stroom       | 10,002
```

📉 Liquidity Drift (Week Overview)
==================================

**ACINQ Remote**
```
Day 1  | ████████
Day 4  | █████████████████
Day 10 | ███████████████████████████
```
**Kappa Remote**
```
8k   | ████
10k  | ████████
11k  | ████████████████████
```
🧠 Takeaways
============

1.  **HTLC size drives routing**
    *   Micro (≤300 SATs) → Kappa        
    *   Medium (≥500 SATs) → ACINQ
        
2.  **Channels developed natural roles**
    
    *   **Kappa** → micro-payload exit
    *   **ACINQ** → main outbound trunk
    *   **Stroom** → inbound sink
        
3.  **Mission Control adapts quickly** Routing stabilized by Day 3–4.
    
4.  **Anchor channels cause minor balance drift** Occasional +600–1200 SATs added back to local = expected fee adjustments.
    
5.  **Small experiment, big insight** Cost ~10k SATs, revealed clear routing structure.
    

🚀 Next Steps
=============

*   Watch routing without changes for a few more days
*   Possibly strengthen ACINQ
*   Add a 4th well-connected peer
*   Light fee tuning:
    *   Kappa → cheap for micro-flow
    *   ACINQ → efficient for medium-flow
*   Maybe run “Ultra-Micro Drains” (1–50 SATs) for Week 2
    

🙏 Support the Experiment
=========================

⚡ LNURL-pay  
[https://donate.antariksh.sh/](https://donate.antariksh.sh/)

Happy routing ⚡


Cash App question?

$ dollars is what I sent from Cash App with the lightning network. Payment still pending on Cash App.

I am confused, should I contact Muun support or Cash App support?

Sent a payment to my Muun wallet through the lightning network and it says payment pending on Cash App and has been all day. What is going on? I have never had a problem receiving a payment with Muun. What happened to my $ ?

How viable is Zeus Wallet for self-custody swaps (embedded node)?

That is a lot of info, thank you. I'll make time to study the details, especially the buffer reserve I did not know existed.

Supposedly we use:username@cash.app username@strike.me

I have an account with both but have never used CashApp for bitcoin. When entering my CashApp handle in Strike (@cash.app) it says “invalid lightning address”. Entering Strike handle in CashApp (@strike.me) results in “invite user” and sends the payment as pending (never notified in Strike).

BUT By doing a small purchase of Bitcoin on CashApp only then could I access Lightning/BTC QR receive address. I first tried entering the CashApp LN address in Strike Send>Bitcoin Wallet (for 10,000 sats) and it showed a 6 sat fee… BUT NOW I can enter my cashtag in the Send>Username section and it comes up like a valid LN address with NO fee - I sent it and immediately received in CashApp as bitcoin. I tried in Strike also sending a cash balance to the same cashtag name and it worked as well, no fee, and arrived in BTC on my Cash App. Kudos to Strike!!

The return side from CashApp works now too, but ONLY from Bitcoin>Send (enter Strike username in the LN address line), the BTC arrived in Strike immediately. What still doesn’t work is sending cash from Cash App to my Strike username (both from Cash balance or from linked debit card). One comment from a Strike CS rep said CashApp can only send cash to merchants or other cashtags. So from CashApp to Strike users it’s limited to BTC send.

Note: buying BTC on CashApp for either a market buy or limit buy is $0.49 on a $10 order = 5%!!!! Don’t waste money like that. Strike is $0.09, and DCA is free. 🫡

CashApp vs. Strike comparison: Both offer

- free DCA

- free LN send

- multiple options for onchain BTC (unlike most exchanges) but on CashApp the 2 options are much more expensive ($3.11 & $2.09 vs. Strike $0.67 & 0.42 on a 10,000 sat test)

- free BTC send option is only possible on CashApp for 100,000 sat min. and Strike has 75,000 min.

Conclusion: DCA is the way, and @strike.me remains the most appealing UI and most logical UX by far.

Testing the claim: users can pay any CashApp username from Strike and vice versa

I’ve been researching Zeus by watching tutorials and reading comments but I can’t find a clear answer to my purpose in considering Zeus. I like the self-custody aspect of Zeus’ embedded Lightning node and the higher security it offers to send my BTC from an exchange via LN, then swap/splice it on-chain to my cold wallet. I don’t need a small purchase spend wallet currently, which is what most of the tutorials seem to focus on. But none of the tutorials showed a use of self custody plus obfuscation for moving larger amounts via LN to cold storage.

What I want:
- To send the amount that I’m buying DCA on an exchange to Zeus. Not large increments, maybe in batches of 100,000 - 250,000 sats into Zeus Lightning.

- Once I consolidate large enough UTXO’s in Zeus LN I will do an on-chain send to my own air-gapped cold wallet. Essentially emptying my Zeus wallet every month or so.

What I cannot verify yet:
- Is it better to open a channel the first time by swapping from on-chain BTC to my new Zeus LN wallet, or by sending a Lightning transfer from the exchange directly? (I think opening a new channel by transfer will be about 10,000 sat fee)

- When opening a channel I think it will need to be large enough to accommodate the maximum balance I plan to hold on Zeus LN wallet at any given time, not just the size of the periodic transfers from the exchange (= rather than a 250,000 sat size channel I should do 1,500,000 size?)

- But once I transfer out my larger UTXO (maybe 1,250,000 sats) and my LN wallet is now only holding 250,000 sats, what happens in the coming weeks when I build up again to 1,500,000 via new LN transfer to Zeus? I read somewhere that it would not matter that I initially opened a large 1,500,000 channel, by sending on-chain I would have my channel reduced and basically have to open a new channel again every month or so to accommodate the new balances.

Am I mistaken about how LN channels get reduced? Is my scenario of swapping large amounts not an intended purpose of Zeus?

(I’ve basically been doing this exact process on Muun and it works fine, but it’s not full self-custody, not my own node, and LN swap fees are a bit high)

Thanks for any advice from current Zeus users!

Week-0: Starting My LN Node Routing Experiment (New Operator, Early Journey)


Hey everyone,  
This is **Week-0** of my Lightning routing experiment.

I’m a new operator running a family-owned bare-metal node out of the rural Midwest (Antriksh ⚡ Node). My goal for the next several weeks is to document what it’s like to start routing from scratch, learn channel management, and share what works — and what doesn’t — for small operators.

Since I don’t have the capital to join the big “G-Spot” experiment (their minimum channel size is much higher than my wallet balance), I’m taking a **practical small-node approach** instead:

# ✅ What I’m starting with

*   ~640k sats in my on-chain wallet
    
*   A few solid peers (ACINQ, others)
    
*   One or two new channels I’ll be opening in the next week
    
*   Zero past routing experience — this is a **true baseline**
    
*   A custom stats page + tip server I built (and open-sourced) to track my progress
    

# 🎯 My plan for this experiment

Each week I’ll post:

*   How many sats routed (if any!)
    
*   Fee revenue
    
*   Channel changes (opens, closes, rebalancing, etc.)
    
*   Liquidity challenges
    
*   What mistakes I made
    
*   What I learned
    
*   What I would do differently
    
*   Hard numbers & screenshots for transparency
    

I’ll also track things like:

*   Routing performance
    
*   Forwarding events
    
*   Capacity distribution
    
*   Whether small nodes can gain inbound
    
*   How long it takes to get **first routing success**
    

# 🔍 Why I’m doing this

A lot of new node operators ask the same questions I had:

*   “How do I get my first route?”
    
*   “Are small nodes pointless?”
    
*   “How do I grow inbound?”
    
*   “Do channel experiments actually matter?”
    

My hope is that this series gives real-world data — especially for operators starting with under 1M sats.

# 📝 What’s next

*   Open a couple of strategic channels
    
*   Try small inbound-friendly fee policies
    
*   Begin measuring daily activity
    
*   Share **Week-1 results** in a few days
    

If you want me to test something — fee schedules, peer suggestions, rebalancing strategies, etc. — let me know and I’ll include it.

Thanks, and see you in **Week-1** ⚡

bitdevs

Where to get Testnet sats?

thanks here the testnet4 address

```
tb1qj5t9kxgg6k0zpqrh7dh326x6a6mmqnyv48zddr
```

> 00d92bd882d9954bc119526b8b454ebfd21ab4c66d13bc3d0be6ecccde791835

thanks appreciated, let's see when it arrives 🤣

yes I noticed that, using testnet3 is a bit tricky now, that's why I'm open to play with 4 too

I've tried various faucets but give limited supply and often I need to make multiple requests to test out a script am working on. These are the ones I already tried:

- https://testnet.help/en/btcfaucet/
- https://coinfaucet.eu/en/btc-testnet/
- https://bitcoinfaucet.uo1.net/
- https://cryptopump.info/

If anyone knows any faucet that can provide at least 0.1 BTC please share below... or if you have extra please share to this address 'tb1qzlxnt380ce9shxc5l6vtxe4a26uyygqf4az0u4'



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