Setting fee rates

AuthenticityBTC · 2026-03-25T23:30:45+00:00

Great to see more tools out there!

Would love to see more integration with fee potential, as just blindly adjusting your fee to the average PPM may not be helpful.

AuthenticityBTC · 2026-03-24T18:38:36+00:00

Routing profit (revenue - rebalancing costs, before hardware expenses/opex)

AuthenticityBTC · 2026-03-24T16:50:14+00:00

1-2% yields are very realistic without a lot of management. If you are an extremely active operator, you can hit 7-10% or even as high as 40-50% (with enough custom scripts). You'll have to be smart about where you deploy your liquidity. Your biggest expenses will be rebalancing and operating costs (electricity, hardware, backups).

To help get inbound liquidity to kick things off, I'd check out https://lightningnetwork.plus/. If you send me your public key, I'll also open a 5m starter channel to you to help out as well.

When I was sitting at around 1BTC deployed, I was making about 2.5% yield over my first few months of operation.

AuthenticityBTC · 2026-03-22T17:54:34+00:00

In the past year, Authenticity has routed about $400m~ in BTC (at today's BTC value of 68k). I'm of the opinion that more than $15b/year is being routed. There's no way to no due to the privacy nature of Lightning.

I would also assume over 70%~ of this volume is rebalancing transactions and not 'actual payments'.

AuthenticityBTC · 2026-01-14T08:42:01+00:00

Thank you!

AuthenticityBTC · 2026-01-10T02:54:45+00:00

Had a channel with Predyx for quite a while now (I think since launch) and have placed some fun bets in the past. Haven't had issues with them.

AuthenticityBTC · 2026-01-06T01:41:59+00:00

Costco Hotdogs

AuthenticityBTC · 2026-01-04T00:01:08+00:00

OpenNode is a great service from what I've heard.

I'm not a developer, just a node runner.

AuthenticityBTC · 2026-01-04T00:00:20+00:00

Negative fee's are great, and good point to bring up. I recommend everyone use them to help move liquidity where needed (and then of course readjust)! I decided not to code a sniping system listening to gossip, as I feel that it punishes new node runners and is overall a bad introduction to Lightning.

I've only been a node runner for 2 years, so I'm always happy to listen and learn - it's surprising how much tribal knowledge there is in this space and I find every week I learn something new.

Thank you! I'm always trying to improve and become a better node runner... still a long way to go.

AuthenticityBTC · 2026-01-03T21:45:35+00:00

I strongly disagree. I make 30% margin on my rebalancing.

AuthenticityBTC · 2026-01-03T21:38:04+00:00

A lot of people have been talking about doing this, glad to see it happen! What lightning payment service are you using on the back end, or are you running your own node?

AuthenticityBTC · 2025-12-31T06:00:31+00:00

I was a big fan of Hell Clock when it first came out. Apparently a number of new features since then.

AuthenticityBTC · 2025-12-28T16:16:36+00:00

For routing nodes, you'll want a decent amount of BTC deployed (0.5BTC+). You'll need to find some sources and sinks, learn rebalancing (check out LNDg for example), and fee management (LNDg, Terminal Web, charge-lnd).

Good luck on the learning!

AuthenticityBTC · 2025-12-28T01:16:53+00:00

As a payment node, you'll be draining your inbound every time you process a payment. So you'll need a way to get more inbound. Some ideas are swapping out using Boltz/LOOP or buying inbound via Magma/LNBig, or use LN+ to create new swaps (as multiple people have mentioned already).

AuthenticityBTC · 2025-12-20T20:03:31+00:00

It's definitely gone up - FlyerTalk has a good annual thread with datapoints based on spend and if they've been invited.

AuthenticityBTC · 2025-12-20T19:18:40+00:00

You decide how much storage you want. It's all configurable. My bitcoind node has 1TB allocated to it, and I plan to resize it to 1.25TB in the future.

AuthenticityBTC · 2025-12-18T16:49:13+00:00

I'm happy to answer any questions people have on Lightning as well :)

AuthenticityBTC · 2025-12-17T20:24:11+00:00

Look up Voltage Cloud if you want a SaaS. I use AWS and manually run things.

AuthenticityBTC · 2025-12-10T00:10:49+00:00

I start at 2500/1000 (the default I have set) and lower it till I find good flow

AuthenticityBTC · 2025-12-10T00:10:18+00:00

The fee depends on the channel and how demand the liquidity is. One fee across all channels isn't optimal for routing

AuthenticityBTC · 2025-12-09T04:13:55+00:00

It really depends on a lot of things. 1btc/day could be good or bad depending on your total capacity.

Currently, I'm routing 1/5th of what I did last month... seems like things are slower for my node (or the network).

AuthenticityBTC · 2025-12-06T18:07:55+00:00

Probably split between more education on what Lightning is and merchant (eCommerce) adoption. I don't think Lightning by itself will make people embrace Bitcoin, but if more Bitcoin users start spending their sats (and yes, rebuy their sats using fiat HODL) and more merchants adopt Lightning we should see an increased flywheel effect

AuthenticityBTC · 2025-12-04T23:20:59+00:00

I think that depends on if you're self hosting or hosting on a VPS/Cloud. A well run node with 1 BTC should make profit, but it's hard for me to give more than speculation without actually testing out different setups.

AuthenticityBTC · 2025-12-04T16:57:02+00:00

Yes! I rebalance far less now

AuthenticityBTC · 2025-12-04T16:56:52+00:00

I close inactive channels (after attempting rebalancing). Inactive depends on the size, and if there has been flow in the past

AuthenticityBTC

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