Oddbean

In good conscience I have to chime in on this post. It's awesome the revenue that Derek is making, but for anyone thinking about standing up a routing node, the majority of nodes won't be profitable. There are cost associated to open channels, rebalancing, and most of all, force closes. Here are my routing stats for approximately 5 months. What it doesn't show is that I'm around 150,000 sats in the red. Running a lightning node, in my opinion, is a great education in Bitcoin and contribution to the resiliency of the Lightning network. But save for the really large nodes, many won't be profitable. Take that for what it's worth. I'm my mind the sats that I've "lost" aren't a loss at all but the best education/experience I've had in the space. https://image.nostr.build/fc6f35558e418da206a12416b525a5c4a0ebd00184f90918f626351d741ffbe0.jpg nostr:nevent1qqsgd0mty3cyt8mqauwqvzq2tfdt7kaw6akqg07queqft58uzap7npgpz9mhxue69uhkummnw3ezuamfdejj7q3q8ams6ewn5aj2n3wt2qawzglx9mr4nzksxhvrdc4gzrecw7n5tvjqxpqqqqqqzctgdjx

Definitely agree with the sentiment @djmeistro✝️ 🍊💊⚡️ #Noderunning is not passive income. It's not earning 'yield' on your sats. Most nodes will never be profitable. But that doesn't mean they can't be with some effort and patience. Most important factor overall is stability; That includes running on decent hardware (not raspi) and offering a clearnet connection rather than TOR-only. These two points alone will eliminate a very large percentage of avoidable forced-closures, which is *by far* the #1 biggest cost in maintaining a public routing node. #Nodelou🐈 is currently a month short of its 3-year nodeiversary, and is earning sats consistently every day. Many others earn multiples of this in far less time and/or with smaller nodes, so this is just an example. https://image.nostr.build/7aa592ce7cfe7421510da42a88404f373f7401f53660578f0a7c2f4a33d85bab.png ~MORE IMPORTANTLY~ My node is my sole banking/checking account and has allowed me to #optout entirely of fiat banking. It's my privacy layer on top of #Bitcoin. It hosts my own @mempool instance and my personal Bitcoin Core verifies my own txs. It also runs my @btcpayserver that powers @SweetSats, our farm webstore, and also functions as our in-person POS at farmer's markets connected remotely via @ZEUS. I use it to buy products online, pay bills, and send/receive self-sovereign zaps. I can travel anywhere in the world and access my funds with no intermediaries or restrictions. Even if it cost me to keep it running– the services and utility it provides in my daily life are absolutely indispensable over the costs of using traditional banking services. Not to mention tons of highly-valuable education and skills acquired, and a couple good #norderunner friends along the way! 🤓🤙 I never set out to earn from my node: I just aim to provide a stable connection hub for my peers with high uptime and low-latency, good channel connections, and try to set the lowest fees possible while maintaining flow and channel balance. The rest is just patience. #runanode Connection URIs: 03641a88d80a2a85bbecd770577aca9b5495616e9fef63d66ef2631b7cca1d395d@198.46.217.205:9735 03641a88d80a2a85bbecd770577aca9b5495616e9fef63d66ef2631b7cca1d395d@zteyygsobjvm32qkusrvq4clebfbb4b2iso2jto23kzxohfxkwedynqd.onion:9735 @Amboss: https://amboss.space/node/03641a88d80a2a85bbecd770577aca9b5495616e9fef63d66ef2631b7cca1d395d h/t @Derek Ross @The: Daniel⚡️ @The Nodestrich ♾️ nostr:nevent1qvzqqqqqqypzq8sx00a43qs9wm0nmtmukpgagsgmszst37sjlsjne59tg8835grfqy88wumn8ghj7mn0wvhxcmmv9uq3zamnwvaz7tmwdaehgu3wwa5kuef0qqstnas6h3862ehqapld4spc760p57phe98nazp9ffduvpjxcax2wdgmu0g0g

*obvious caveat is the stats shown in Terminal do not account for HW costs and monthly electricity costs! Plus some risk of holding sats in hot wallet, etc. But still, it's absolutely invaluable for me personally. ⚡

Some risk? Sir, you have approaching 15 Bitcoin in total capacity. Even assuming only ~1/2 of that is on your side of any given channel, that is far more money in a hot wallet than most plebs even own, let alone would be willing to have in a hot wallet. So it's not just time and effort and decent hardware that is needed to run a profitable routing node. It's also a decent amount of capital outside of cold storage.

Check out https://v2.minibolt.info/ for general rundown & step-by-step plus Plebnet (https://t.me/plebnet) and @The Nodestrich ♾️ (https://bit.ly/nodestrich-tg) for noderunner advice, tips, community, etc 🤙

😱Forced closures? I started my node back in the 1 sat/vB days had it on easy mode for the 1st year and a half so plenty time to learn without FCs wrecking everything. But then that fee spike last year wiped out pretty much all previous profits and I had to grind back slowly this year. Noderunning is a wild ride, definitely not for the faint of heart 😆

It's about creating your own networks. Think banking networks. Their ATMs interoperate, why is that? Because they take a cut. For a "profitable" routing node it's about business relationships not hoping your node is well connected. Create (usually the only) pathways to buy things for your local stores in BTC. Take the day, talk to all local stores who will listen that you can provide essentially an under the table way to have direct customer relations. Open your node to them and have them put up a QR placard in their business to use your routing node to buy items there with Lightning. Derek has connections, if very plugged into his community and is probably why he is promoting his node. Just some food for thought. No one is saying put on a parachute and figure it out on the way down.

Here's the thing Jack, the whole reason why I quoted Derek's post is because I think the picture tells only half truths. I could be wrong. nostr:nprofile1qqsr7acdvhf6we9fch94qwhpy0nza36e3tgrtkpku25ppuu80f69kfqpr9mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujumt0d4hhxarj9ecxjmnt9uq3wamnwvaz7tmjv4kxz7fwdehhxarj9e3xzmny9uq3zamnwvaz7tmwdaehgu3wwa5kuef03vj0dj is your node profitable?

I dunno? I rarely open new channels. I rarely have any force closures. I don't rebalance. I hope it breaks even or close to it. I don't run a node to be profitable. I run a node to help the network and to be self sovereign with my lightning transactions. Year one was manually rebalancing. I lost money then for sure. Year two I ran auto-rebalancing via LNDg. The past two years I haven't been rebalancing to save funds.

Gotcha...when I read "earns generational wealth" to me that implies you're making more than your cost. There's a big difference between revenue and profit. I think it's important to level set for noobs thinking about setting up a Lightning node with the sole intent of being profitable

I am actually happy that I have movements on my channel now i just need to understand what does it mean and why i am getting onchain funds when an outbound channel balance moves (rhetorical question) but the first time it has happened, i was like hey thats cool 😁