Channel Capacity Question for Accepting Payments \ stacker news ~lightning

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Channel Capacity Question for Accepting Payments

346 sats \ 10 comments \ @hes 9 Feb lightning

Hey all. I am setting up a Plebeian Marketplace on Nostr using my Lightning node. I currently have two channels open (one with a capacity of 500,000 sats, one with a capacity of 100,000 sats). Both use different LSP's (Megalith and Olympus).

My question is regarding the maximum product price I can set for my marketplace. One of my products is 1M sats. Obviously my receiving capacity is not large enough to cover this, so I was planning on opening up another channel.

If I open another channel for 500,000 sats, that would bring my total receiving capacity to 1.1M which would cover the product. However my question is if I need all of the receiving capacity in the same channel, or if the sale would pull from all three channels? Am I best to close out the first two channels and open a single, larger channel?

Sorry for the noob question.

Tl;DR: Can someone explain how I should best set up my node to accommodate my store.

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121 sats \ 4 replies \ @thebullishbitcoiner 9 Feb

You wouldn’t happen to be running Alby Hub would you?

If so, maybe consider a phoenixd backend. I’ve had a great experience with their auto liquidity so far.

33 sats \ 1 reply \ @DarthCoin 9 Feb

Yes is a good option. Even so, I would recommend to "deposit" to yourself first a big chunk of funds, then swap out 90% of them (not all - so the channel will not be closed) and voila... you have a nice inbound channel with minimal fees.

Otherwise, for each "deposit" / payment coming from your shop you will pay the fees for splicing.

10 sats \ 0 replies \ @thebullishbitcoiner 9 Feb

Good recommendation. Sounds like he would need to start with a larger channel for sure. The 2m default was good enough for my merch shop.

21 sats \ 1 reply \ @hes OP 9 Feb

Interesting. Yeah-- I'm running Alby Hub. Looking into phoenixd now. Any other resources you have to get setup would be much appreciated 🫡

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @thebullishbitcoiner 10 Feb

I installed both on an Ubuntu machine. Phoenixd was super simple. It literally was the two commands on their website.

Only thing that might not be apparent is that a new terminal window is needed if you want to run phoenix-cli.

54 sats \ 2 replies \ @DarthCoin 9 Feb

Nope, just those 2 channels will not be enough for you to receive payments. No matter how many shards will take a MPP payment (if the payer knows how to do it), it will end / struggle into your total inbound capacity.

You will need at least one channel with at least 115% of the total price of 1 item. If you want to sell one item per payment. If you want to sell multiple items at once, you will need to have at least 1 channel covering the whole payment.

You will also have to drain those channels every time you receive a payment. So the best way is to buy an inbound channel that can cover at least 10 items. If that is not enough then open another one, even bigger and drain them all the time, end of the day, using swaps.

I will suggest to make small steps, opening a 2M sats inbound channel and if you see that is getting traction and receive a lot of payments, then open a next one, 5x bigger.

Nevertheless, when you can make a payment using 2-3 different channels, using MPP (multi-part payment).

21 sats \ 1 reply \ @hes OP 9 Feb

Very helpful. Thank you for the insight!

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @DarthCoin 9 Feb

good luck with your shop!

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @bartoli 10 Feb

How often will that 1M product be bought? Do not forget that for you to be able to receive 1M, the other side of the channel has to have 1M of his sats stuck in the channel. They must have an interest to keep it that way (bigger channel with not everything on their side, open for routing that brings them some fee,..)

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @hes OP 11 Feb

There is only one product that is 1M sats-- it is original 1/1 art. Does this rebalancing still apply even if the channel is private through a provider such as Megalith or Olympus (from Alby Hub)?

Still trying to learn the ins and outs of LN. Perhaps I should just open a shop accepting base layer BTC. Appreciate the help.