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
≥ 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
-
HTLC size drives routing
- Micro (≤300 SATs) → Kappa
- Medium (≥500 SATs) → ACINQ
-
Channels developed natural roles
- Kappa → micro-payload exit
- ACINQ → main outbound trunk
- Stroom → inbound sink
-
Mission Control adapts quickly Routing stabilized by Day 3–4.
-
Anchor channels cause minor balance drift Occasional +600–1200 SATs added back to local = expected fee adjustments.
-
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/
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Happy routing ⚡