closing channels with high fees

Posted over 2 years ago by ridethefreakinglightning

I just closed a bunch of old channels that had high fees and had sent/received very little sats (300-500 day old channels).
I understand the desire to make routing fees but I don't want my sats tied up in a channel with little chance of liquidity movement.

what are your thoughts about high fee channels? worth it? not worth it?

9 Comments

Debian96

Debian96 wrote over 2 years ago

I tend to adjust my fees by how much movement I have in them. If I have a peer that has stupid high fees and is blocking our channel and its doing nothing then its probably best to close the channel. Have a few really fat channels to exchanges. Tons of one way traffic but totally worth it since I have really high fees to those exchanges. Just my 2 sats :)


LiveLongAndProsper

LiveLongAndProsper wrote over 2 years ago

What do you consider high fees? I set all my channels to 0 base fee, and currently most are 25 ppm. For me it isn't about making a profit - it's about promoting the growth of the lightning network while HODLing.


ridethefreakinglightning wrote over 2 years ago

i'm doing mostly 1/1 fees personally, high is subjective


DarthCoin

DarthCoin wrote over 2 years ago

Yes, some nodes have ridiculous fees and is not that they have only for specific channels, they use high fees policy for all their channels.
When I connect to a node, I always study it for a while first.
If some other node is connecting to me and start using high fees, and the balance is on their side, I simply disable the channel until they lower the fees.

disabling channel
lncli updatechanstatus --funding_txid 123 --action disable

Also you could raise your fees for that channel at that level that your peer cannot use anymore that channel.
For example this node, is using insane 5sat base fee for all channels
https://amboss.space/node/0384b220ab8701207f6e4b3576517c6390276ee9ee40b1d0c97e96579190e5c946

I understand users have costs to open channels, but that doesn't mean you now want to recover your sats in the first routes.
I don't give a shit that you don't have enough sats. I want to transact cheap and fast on LN, otherwise I will just go onchain.


LN+

LN+ Admin wrote over 2 years ago

I think incentives are important for a long term well functioning network, but don't feel bad about closing a channel unless you have a commitment to keep it open.


medium_of_exchange wrote over 2 years ago

I am actually going through doing the opposite -- I'm closing channels that have LOW fees to my node, and all the liquidity is on my side. These routes are being advertised to the network as a cheap way to get into my node but they aren't actually available because there's no liquidity. This creates lots of routing failures which hurts my node's reputation (and the other side too). For example, ridethefreakinglightning, I would actually rather you raise your fee to me so that some liquidity can build up on your side, and our channel can become considered reliable again by the network.

This is all based on my understanding of how routing/pathfinding works. I want to route more successful payments. I don't want liquidity failures either into or out of my node, which hurt my reputation.


radday55

radday55 wrote over 2 years ago

Base Fee: 0 mSAT
Fee Rate: 97 mSAT
I had to lower my fee because because I did not have any movement in weeks at the rate I had, but after weeks I seen some movement. The above rate is gave me some luck and one of my old post asking the same question  (https://lightningnetwork.plus/posts/126).  
I may start mixing (Samourai Dojo) due to the ever increasing base fees within the lightning node and I only having a limited number of channels not hundreds or thousands as my previous post states, it just seems as if users are creating Super nodes.
I personally do not want to disconnect from any of my channels due to the obligations that I stated when opening them I understand some users have limitations decentralization not monetization. 


aybabtu

aybabtu wrote over 2 years ago

Base Fee should be 0, as it helps routing a lot, right? (Think cdecker released some paper on that recently, cant remember details)
I just run my feeadjuster (cl plugin) once a day. If I have all the liquidity fees are like 30 ppm, if I have none they go to ~3000, basically disabling them. Balanced chans get like 250. Just don't update too often, as this would hurt the privacy of LN (auto-adjusted fees broadcast channel usage information which would allow to reconstruct single payments if done after each routing event)

thanks to medium_of_exchange for raising the fee issue in a recent swap :)


aybabtu

aybabtu wrote over 2 years ago

medium_of_exchange: 
> These routes are being advertised to the network as a cheap way to get into my node but they aren't actually available because there's no liquidity. This creates lots of routing failures which hurts my node's reputation (and the other side too). 

is it not obvious to the sender that the routing failed at your peer, and not at your node? 

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ridethefreakinglightning
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