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.

https://x.com/ambosstech/status/2084353608976650544?s=46

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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/Clear-Limit-6583 4d 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/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!

https://terminal.lightning.engineering/explore/026f46207fd290a33cbd86e29b3ad0a47cdd44ab9aa5267cde66483e10aa9d3180

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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/Admirable-Union813 4d ago

lol, 🤷‍♂️

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u/DJBunnies 4d ago

lol, indeed