115 sats \ 1 reply \ @south_korea_ln 9 Jul \ on: Looking back at a year of routing lightning
I closed down my routing node before that, but I agree that it was a blast while it lasted. I haven't followed much the field and only rarely check out the old telegram groups where node runners were helping each other out. Some groups still seem quite active while others seem to have died out.
As for the quote above, do you feel there are still newcomers joining the game, or it's mostly the same old nodes controlling the whole space? Is the capacity increasing, decreasing or roughly the same (in Bitcoin terms and in fiat terms)? I experienced the golden age of Umbrel users. The hype was high, the worries were low. The Ordinal nation attack probably has killed most of these, and I wonder if it's just the very technical ones that are able to weather these storms. LN is definitely entering its maturation phase, so its good the hype is dying out to be replaced by pragmatism and capable routing nodes.
There are usually some newbies joining swaps on LN+, but it looks like the veterans like ACINQ are still the big players on the network. I think the tech-savvy users handled the recent attack pretty well. While GUI node tools are cool, I feel for some tasks digging into those configuration files is better, like when setting up automated fees with charge-lnd. It's all part of the learning process, right?
My routing rate has taken a bit of a hit lately since the ordinals, I think because the current routes aren't very balanced. Maybe it's because we're all being more cautious and not opening as many channels. But with low fees and the recent price drop, I'm hopeful that more people will start setting up nodes and opening channels soon!
I've been noticing that BTC capacity is slowly going up, and there's been a nice jump in USD capacity too thanks to the recent uptrend. It's exciting to see the network growing!
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