Have your payments faile more frequently in Q3-Q4 of 2024 than previously? \ stacker news ~lightning

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Have your payments faile more frequently in Q3-Q4 of 2024 than previously?

290 sats \ 14 comments \ @denationalized 8 Dec lightning

I have 1BTC locked in private channels with 3 different entities (Acinq and top liquidity nodes). I use core-lightning. About one of 20 of my attempted payments succeeds. I Q3/Q4 and I was forced to use a centralized exchange to finish selling my LNBTC on robosats (I had to do do a LN withdrawal from the exchange to settle the trade). Before Q3 of 2024 most of my lightning payments succeeded. This state of lightning network forced me to deposit onchain BTC on an exchange instead of using robosats to get fiat. Have the experience of y'all with LN also gotten worse?

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100 sats \ 4 replies \ @DarthCoin 8 Dec

I was forced to use a centralized exchange to finish selling my LNBTC on robosats

Use fiat. Bitcoin is not for you. Case closed. And no, my LN payments do not fail. because I pay merchants directly in sats and not giving my sats for fiat. A LN payment will fail only when the route is a trash or some kind of bad peer was in between or you put a very low fee, or you choose bad direct peers. Just because you use "top liquidity nodes" it doesn't mean they cannot "disable" your private route.

Better learn how to manage your LN liquidity #679242

LNBTC

There's no such thing. There are all sats. That's all.

0 sats \ 3 replies \ @denationalized OP 8 Dec

You wrote in this guide:

Use several LN wallets, not just one, spreading your liquidity on few channels, I would say 2-3 channels per wallet/node. No need for more. Do not open tiny channels like 10k-20k-50k-100k. Open like min 500k-1M-2M per channel. Depends also of your spending habits, if you have large amounts moving or small amounts. Think in how much a channel can handle a payment of yours, in and out. Try to have each LN wallet for a specific spending habit (one for zaps, tips,small donations, one for buying beers, groceries, one for buying sats from exchanges, one for swaps etc as you desire). Always move around funds from those channels ! Do not keep them with more than 50% of the balance on the peer side. If you know that will not use a depleted channel anymore, but you hope that someday (you don't know when) you will use it to receive more sats, better just close it and buy an inbound channel on the fly from many other LSP that are already offering on the fly inbound channels. If you already bought such "inbound channel" and you have a contract for 6 months or 1 year with the LSP, you better use it in this period.

I treated my core lightning wallet as a spending wallet whenever there were any merchants willing to accept sats. 7 channels with maximum amounts. But over the last months the lightning payments started to fail. I am now forced to use onchain Bitcoin for my living expenses.

0 sats \ 2 replies \ @DarthCoin 8 Dec

You imply that the whole LN is not working anymore, when in fact is your own single node that is not doing well. Consider changing your node policies. LN is just fine.

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @denationalized OP 8 Dec

Due to my circumstances, I am rarely online - every couple of days when I need to spend sats I am online for a couple of hours. But being rarely online was never a problem when it came to spending sats in previous years. I use default settings. As an attempt of dealing with the problem I even created a channel with a non-onion node (with wallet of satoshi) and tried to pay over IPv4 instead of over Tor. All this top no avail. The payments do not go through and I always get this type of message:

 "code": 210,
   "message": "Ran out of routes to try after 4 attempts: see `paystatus`",
   "attempts": [
      {
         "status": "failed",
         "failreason": "failed: WIRE_TEMPORARY_CHANNEL_FAILURE (reply from remote)",
         "partid": 0,
         "amount_msat": 50000000
      },
      {
         "status": "failed",
         "failreason": "failed: WIRE_TEMPORARY_CHANNEL_FAILURE (reply from remote)",
         "partid": 1,
         "amount_msat": 50000000,
         "parent_partid": 0
      },
      {
         "status": "failed",
         "failreason": "failed: WIRE_TEMPORARY_CHANNEL_FAILURE (reply from remote)",
         "partid": 2,
         "amount_msat": 50000000,
         "parent_partid": 1
      },
      {
         "status": "failed",
         "failreason": "failed: WIRE_TEMPORARY_CHANNEL_FAILURE (reply from remote)",
         "partid": 3,
         "amount_msat": 50000000,
         "parent_partid": 2
      }
   ]
}

10 sats \ 0 replies \ @DarthCoin 9 Dec

Check the logs for you LN graph sync. I think you are not synced correctly and that's why you get WIRE_TEMPORARY_CHANNEL_FAILURE (reply from remote)

21 sats \ 4 replies \ @gnilma 8 Dec

I use LND and am not familiar with Core Lightning. You mentioned that you are rarely online, which is not very good for running your own lightning node. The fact that you have your channel open doesn't mean the other party cannot disable the channel while not closing the channel. Have you consider switching to LSP wallets like Phoenix or Breez? I really think to properly run your own lightning node, you need to have a machine running 24/7 and you also have to actively manage your node.

21 sats \ 3 replies \ @denationalized OP 8 Dec

The fact that you have your channel open doesn't mean the other party cannot disable the channel while not closing the channel.

And this other party may disable such channels because such is the gag order from above, from the law enforcement, or from some government agencies. I am afraid that this is going in the direction of whitelisting - hence my question in order to find out if other people observed similar issues. I don't feel comfortable with mobile devices, that's why I would not use lightning noncustodially. On the other hand, I tend to stay at home a lot in from of a Linux terminal, am comfortable with Bash and scripting. Hence Core Lightning felt like a natural choice. And for a couple of years it worked fine even for large amounts.

10 sats \ 2 replies \ @gnilma 8 Dec

I'm not so sure if it's a gag order from law enforcement. It could be the fact that the other party just see your node as an inactive node or they don't like the fees you set or whatever reasons. Lightning nodes are run by people, so people or algorithms set by people will decide what they do with their nodes / channels.

I have seen no problem with my node lately. I run a Tor only LND node 24/7 and it does some routing but not a lot. I use it regularly sending and receiving, not large amounts, from few sats to up to maybe 100k sats. I have not notice any issues with my node lately.

11 sats \ 1 reply \ @denationalized OP 8 Dec

My is a non-routing one, and so fee are not a problem. My payments fail despite setting 3% fees. You are a third person here that says there is no problem with payments - but two of you are routing nodes. Perhaps the gag orders are not meant to destroy the LN but rather co-opt it and centralize it, so that it can be censored. Do you run your node as a company?

Lightning nodes are run by people, so people or algorithms set by people will decide what they do with their nodes / channels.

Yeah, people like the ones running Acinq who pulled out of the US earlier this year. Do you think they pulled out because the fees of their peers rather than due to the perception of a prospective threat from the law enforcement. I'm not blaming them, I'm just trying to figure out how to survive - I have had no fiat income / savings for several years..

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @gnilma 8 Dec

Do you run your node as a company?

No, I run it as a personal node at home.

True that the current US administration had been extremely hostile to bitcoin. Operation chokepoint 2.0 says it all. Hopefully it gets better with the new administration.

Sorry, I have no solution / suggestion for you with your current circumstance. Wish you the best of luck in figuring out a suitable long term solution.

10 sats \ 0 replies \ @nikotsla 8 Dec

CLN had some issues solved in the last version, now they find better routes.

10 sats \ 2 replies \ @senf 8 Dec

I can't remember the last time I had a lightning transaction fail.

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @denationalized OP 8 Dec

Do you run your node 24/7? Is your node a non-routing one?

10 sats \ 0 replies \ @senf 8 Dec

I run it 24/7, yeah. I like to route payments when I can. I also use some mobile lightning wallets.