HamSandwich's avatar
HamSandwich
btx@amboss.space
npub1yvep...h9zy
Director of Software Engineering at <insert big firm> If there’s a crash, chances are I bought whatever crashed the day before. Trials and tribulations of bootstrapping an LND node. When I know not much about anything! £3k funnelled in, with up to £400 extra added each month. What could go wrong (or right?!) My complete candid journey. https://amboss.space/c/btx
Routing is taking off today for the HamSandwich! Almost enough for another coffee #lightning #lnd #amboss #bitcoin image
Lesson 9. This has two important lessons. 1: just because a channel was a cash cow before, doesn’t mean it always will be. I had one earning a steady 1700ppm and not able to refill it fast enough, but now I can’t shift anything from it even at 400ppm 2: Urban dictionary your node name. Turns out a HamSandwich is NSFW. Fun!
Lesson 8. Remember to unblock port 22 before you enable ufw remotely. Failing that, remember your server’s terminal password given you’ve been using an ssh key and/or security token for remote access. Failing that. Try every password you remember until you finally get the right one. *phew* #lightning #lnd
Lesson 7 (though links to 6) Start new channels with high fees then decrease them gradually to find the right price point. Else you’re just throwing free liquidity to your new peer and some, like ACINQ, will drain you in seconds once you open. #lightning #lnd #bitcoin
Lesson 6. Nearly every channel has two price points. The rebalance price, and the actual market price. Make sure you target the right price point else life gets unnecessarily hard 🤦‍♂️
Lesson 5: if you have liquidity stuck, don’t be afraid to abandon a peer to hunt for a more balanced one. Everyone is after their own interests and it may not be beneficial for that particular node operator to help you balance. I burned a lot trying to dance around balancing a peer, when in reality slashing and burning is the better way for them for now. Likewise channels that are too small just get liquidity stuck. The realisation I have 50k sats stuck in 3 channels when in my early days of setting up, every sat needs to be operational. Oh and #Zeus is bloody awesome. #lightningnetwork #lnd
Lesson 4 1. First Identify a sustainable sink/tap loop (even if manual to start with) and then ‘follow the chain’. Operating a second node to receive payments then send them back to the sink is invaluable. There are more efficient ways of submarine swaps than loops and Boltz to move funds on/off chain. Be creative! 2. Before you get annoyed at spending 40k sats, remember each sat spent is also a learning experience. If you get it right, you may make it back! After spending my allotted learning balance, I opted to burn the test umbrel node (really didn’t feel safe running in umbrel) and start a fresh node with a fresh P&L 3. Balance of Satoshi telegram notifications are great. 4. Zeus is great at showing revenue. Less so profit after expenses 11 days in, 35k sats in fees earned. Mental gymnastics and a -1 multiplier applied, I’m spending the 6869 I haven’t earned back yet. The blue line on the P&L feels good #lnd #lightning
Who out there uses watchtowers and who rides the luck? Everyone should have a watchtower out there. Anyone out there want to share watchtowers? Hook me up! I restricted my tower by IP Watchtowers. Underused way to save your bacon. Just make sure you use one with no cross dependency on your existing LND/Bitcoin node, else it won’t be there if that fails! #lnd #lightning
Lesson 2 - Looping and Boltz are expensive if you don’t know what you’re doing. Which I don’t. I originally started just using Thunderhub recommendations. Keep getting liquidity swaps without noticing how much I was spending. Net profit from this early faffing around: -40k sats
My software stack - Portainer to coordinate all my dockers - lnd 0.19 - Thunderhub - RTL - lndg - Lightning Terminal - Loop - Boltz - Chargelnd - BoS (with Telegram) Why so many? Because I don’t know what I’m doing so like options and experimenting. Worst case i lose everything, but that’s the worst case 🤣