After listening to the latest Citadel Dispatch (great rip btw!) I have some thought on Lightning after hearing about  @ODELL talk about how he had to close his node. 

Yeah, Lightning still sucks. I lost money on my little dinky TOR node running through Umbrel. I just had one of my most used channels close for no apparent reason at all, and the dude used a super low fee so funds are in limbo right now. At least I have 5 other channels I can still use. 

If you don't have friends or business connections with fellow node runners, you still have an element of trust. You have to trust your channel mates won't just close on you out of the blue. 

It's a trade off though. Deal with random channel closures and lose some sats in the process or use something custodial and run the risk of getting everything rugged ala Wallet of Satoshi. Btw I know it wasn't a deliberate rug but it still screwed a lot of people who relied on it. 

I think for the time being I'll take the loses and rely on my own node instead of giving control of it to someone else, be it a custodial wallet or a custodial node service. 

CashU seems like the solution if it pans out (which I think it will). There's still some trust involved but there's a lot less friction or learning curve as there is with running your own Lightning Channel. It also doesn't involve a protocol change which is a big plus. 

So it boils down to using an easy button or more work while relying on your own knowledge. I think I'll rely on myself for now. Granted I don't have V4V stuff to deal with so I'm in a different boat compared to the big dogs. 

TLDR there's always tradeoffs, know what you're getting into before committing. And Lightning is not there yet, it needs a LOT of work, Bolt12 wen?

Oh and we hit 70k while I was typing this, hell yeah! 

 Have just concluded my third attempt in 3 years to run pleb LN. You haven't even mentioned the software problems which lead to channel closure (whoops, the app is just gone! It was there yesterday!)

The message arrived 3 years too late. 

At least  @ODELL is pushing back in this episode against whether plebs "SHOULD" pursue certain technical paths. Over the years I have noticed those with developer type brains generally fail to place themselves into the shoes of people without their capabilities, and they obscure and gloss over super important details which would under-sell their perspectives.

Running LN is such an example. Had I heard this episode in 2020 I would have avoided it entirely... as well as running a node on a RasPi (again, you CAN but probably SHOULDN'T).

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