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

OverviewOverview

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📆 10-Day Drain Summary

🎯 Routing Threshold Identified🎯 Routing Threshold Identified

≤ 300 sats → Kappa
≥ 500 sats → ACINQ

Behavior stabilized by Day 3–4.

📈 Drain Size vs Selected Channel📈 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)🔄 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)📉 Liquidity Drift (Week Overview)

ACINQ Remote

Day 1  | ████████
Day 4  | █████████████████
Day 10 | ███████████████████████████

Kappa Remote

8k   | ████
10k  | ████████
11k  | ████████████████████

🧠 Takeaways🧠 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🚀 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🙏 Support the Experiment

⚡ LNURL-pay
https://donate.antariksh.sh/

Happy routing ⚡