If you find self-custodial Lightning confusing when it comes to your channel capacity and liquidity, or if you’ve ever wondered why your wallet says you need a new channel when you already have one, think of it this way. Each channel in your Lightning wallet is like a water bucket. You can receive water into a bucket only until it’s full. To receive more water, you either need to empty some water out of your existing bucket or add additional buckets to your setup. You can only pour/send as much water out of a bucket as it already has in it, but emptying your bucket allows you to then receive more water, up to the capacity of the bucket.
There’s a hole in my bucket, dear Liza dear Liza……😜
Sounds like my bitcoin getting eaten by constant channel fees.
🤷
Yea, fees are definitely problematic when you have to open new channels regularly/frequently. It’s one reason why custodial wallets for small-ish payments still make sense. Unless a person has the existing funds to establish a hefty channel (which most new users won’t), then they’re going to get hit with channel open fees left and right. Huge turnoff to new users.
Sounds complicated and constant maintenance needed to avoid loosing a lot of sats.
It can be but it also depends on how big of a bucket you need. Understanding the reason for getting hit with new channel open fees can help someone avoid them if they pay attention to their balance vs. their capacity. For someone who doesn’t want to worry about that at all, custodial solutions are better.
First receives set channel size, self custody wallet apps should have a quick 3 panel info about this upon setting up a node.
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