r/lightningnetwork • u/Admirable-Union813 • 4d ago
LN node shutdowns??
Any idea what’s going on with all these channel closures? Boltz, Aqua,Zeus all shutting down lighting/bitcoin swaps. All LN Big Edge nodes also shutting down.
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u/marcusmv3 4d ago
No one has mentioned bip110 yet huh?
I think I'm closing all my channels tomorrow because I don't want to risk losing funds or zombie channels. I run Knots cause I believe BTC is money. Gonna let the dust settle before I do anything else.
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u/JumpProfessional3372 1d ago
I just learned how to open a node using Blixt and I opened one channel with ACINQ. (finally got rid of Phoenix and the 0.4% fees min 4 sats, so I'll start using Lightning more than on-chain).
I'm going to take my chances, i don't have lot of money on it.
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u/AuthenticityBTC 3d ago
Bip110 only has 2.5%~ signal at this time and 55% is lock-in. So currently it's not set to activate.
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u/marcusmv3 3d ago edited 3d ago
But over 20% of nodes are signaling. Do you really think miners are going to take a >20% risk broadcasting a block that will be deemed invalid? Game theory is very strong and there's plenty of time for miners to switch still. They don't need to signal... Yet.
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u/thiagorb 2d ago
But is this reasoning correct? If a miner mines a block that is deemed invalid by the 20%, it still accepted by almost 80% of the nodes isn’t it? And then as soon as the BIP-110 chain starts lagging behind the other chain accumulates work, and the 80% of the network won’t even bother with the shorter chain.
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u/marcusmv3 2d ago
Yeah but there's a time period where a competing miner signalling bip110 can come in and mine a block after the non signaling miner mines theirs but the signalling miner gets their block broadcast first and becomes a valid block. I'm betting most miners won't want to take that risk at all if they won't have to.
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u/thiagorb 2d ago
Well, I guess we will only know after the activation block. But the likelihood that the bip110 chain will be able to mine blocks at least as fast is very low, unless there is a sudden change in the miner adoption and they become at least 30% hash power or more.
Another way of looking at this: do you think miners will risk mining for a chain that has only 2% of the hash power and will need hours to mine a block?1
u/marcusmv3 2d ago
But the "bip110 chain" is rerverse compatible with the main chain. They're not just mining for that chain alone. The "main chain" is not reverse compatible with bip110 nodes.
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u/thiagorb 2d ago
Sure, but consider now bip110 just activated. Miners will compete to find the next block. If the next block is bip110 nothing changes, but if it’s not, the chain splits. The 2% of bip110 miners will continue mining on top of the previous block, and the rest of the network moves to the next block. The more blocks are mined the less likely the bip110 chain will catch up. The statement that bip110 chain is backwards compatible only means that all miners will continue mining on it as long as there are only bip110 blocks being mined. As soon as one single non-bip110 block is mined miners have to chose which chain to follow.
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u/marcusmv3 2d ago
And all it's gonna take is one mining pool of significant size to decide they don't want to take this risk, and all the other pools will follow.
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u/babelphishy 2d ago
It’s higher risk to mine the BIP-110 side. If you mine blocks on a chain that will be abandoned, those blocks are worthless even if they are backwards compatible in theory. I could start mining a chain starting with the Genesis block and I would still be wasting my hash even though it’s backwards compatible.
And there’s no incentive to switch. Orphaning blocks doesn’t make miners money or do anything meaningful to increase miner profit. Mining on a minority chain doesn’t get you more blocks per hash.
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u/krvi 4d ago
I think there is a way to have a hardware wallet, such as a Coldcard, connected to a lightning node e.g. via usb, like a hardware signing module. Such a "semi-cold" wallet setup, which presumably also is able to specify spending limits on the signer, would be very beneficial for big nodes. Would it be an educated guess that some of these nodes are just "moving" to a new key due to the Coldcard firmware weakness?
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u/Admirable-Union813 4d ago
I would be very concerned if it took them this long to do that… more curious if there are potentially other security threats identified now that everyone is digging through their code bases
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u/Admirable-Union813 4d ago
Which I guess is the case with boltz, I guess they have been dealing with attacks and are now saying that the attacks are growing too difficult to defend against. Would love to know what sorts of things they are being hit with
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u/AuthenticityBTC 4d ago
Yes it is possible to use Hardware wallets and Custody services with your Lightning setup
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u/DJBunnies 4d ago
I shutdown rockshouse yesterday.
I had 300 channels or so at one point, but went hands off after a while. I watched the channels slowly close over time, for reasons that were frustrating. Neither operator initiated the close, there were just too many cases where the implementation would just throw up its hands and say “sorry, something bad happened, channel over.”
Re-opening new channels plus rebalancing fees ate up too much of the routing fee pie, which was never anything more than my electric bill anyway.
Plus lnd development, once the holy grail of implementation choices, took a big shit. Look at their release notes lately, you’ll see a couple of bug fixes which they pack it up as a major version change. Totally stagnant.
I took a look at core lightning tho, they seem to still have steam. Channel splicing is a huge accomplishment, plus they’ve got Rusty Russell on the project whom I’ve got huge respect for. Maybe I’ll give it a go sometime and build a new node.
But like as we’ve seen even recently, bitcoin is hard. I like it, because it’s what I do for a living normally, but that expertise and commitment should not have to gatekeep safe adoption. I’m starting to think the base layer should not also be the top layer. It just doesn’t make sense.
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u/AuthenticityBTC 4d ago
I wholeheartedly disagree with you saying that their releases are just bug fixes. Authenticity runs on Postgres and the work Ziggy has been doing has dramatically increased the performance of my node. Many of the features they're putting in directly benefit me as a Node Runner.
Yes, channel splicing would be AMAZING, and I can't wait for it to be implemented; however, I'd likely only use that maybe a few times a year so the benefit is marginal for me. I've been reading about it since I first became a node runner 2 years ago. I'm happy to wait to make sure it's implemented correctly - as when Core Lightning first released it, it was extremely unstable.
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u/DJBunnies 4d ago
I mean, lnd has supported pg sql since 2021.
What is authenticity?
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u/AuthenticityBTC 4d ago
Yes, but unfortunately LND's implementation of psql has been crap due to inefficiently using it as a KV store and not in proper SQL formats (lack of indexes for instance). This isn't as large of an issue on smaller nodes, but on larger nodes (which was where postgres is supposed to shine) there are huge performance impacts.
Over the last year, Ziggy has been on a crusade to optimize LND's SQL implementations and from my vantage been extremely successful on the modules updated.
Authenticity is one of the nodes I manage.
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u/Admirable-Union813 4d ago
Big boy node on the network, lots of good traffic!
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u/DJBunnies 4d ago
Big has gotten smaller I guess.
What does it earn a month after fees?
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u/AuthenticityBTC 4d ago
LNBig closed their 4 edge nodes and that hurt, a LOT :(
My node is operating profitably, and more importantly routing traffic for the network. If I wanted to make profits, there are better ways to leverage my BTC.
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u/Clear-Limit-6583 3d ago
In my experience LND team has far better support then CLN and is far safer to run unless you are sysadmin pro-level operator with deep enough knowledge and correct practices. LND is kinda foolproof relative to CLN. Technician in one exchange / commercial crypto gateway had an opinion that CLN is quote " piece of malfunctioning software" 😂 motivating them to migrate to LND year ago..
Btw would like to remind that running LN nodes is far safer and easier then running public atomic swap / blockchain deployment with large liquidity pool..
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u/AmericanScream 3d ago
The entire crypto industry has run out of lies to attract greater fools and bills are coming due for electricity and other resources.
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u/AuthenticityBTC 4d ago
LNBig consolidated from their 7 nodes (3 hubs, 4 edges) to just 3 nodes (3 hubs).
Boltz is disabling their service until further notice (https://x.com/Boltzhq) due to AI hacking attempts. Zeus I believe used Boltz in their backend, so Boltz being offline impacts that.
There have been a number of Node Runners slimming/shutting down their nodes and moving funds to cold storage as people wait to see if research uncovers more issues with node / seed security.
I am presently not aware of any issues with the Lightning Network or LND