LN+ asked over 3 years ago

How long should I keep my channels open?

I understand on LN+ there is a requirement to keep channels open for a certain amount of agreed time. Should I close them when the time runs out?

1 Comment

LN+ Admin wrote over 3 years ago

There is really no good reason to close channels at all, unless there are special circumstances. Even if the channels don't see any traffic right now, in the future that may change as nodes and the network grows, and you will be glad you kept them open.

Here are special situations when you need to close your channels:

Your peer is offline all the time. Read about zombie nodes.
The channel has a lot of capacity on your side and you absolutely need those funds on-chain, and you have no other way to get them out. For example, you are unable to loop out, or send it to an exchange to get on-chain BTC for your LN coins. This can happen if the channel or your peer has very poor connectivity on the network for some reason.
You need to decomission your node entirely and therefore you're closing all your channels.
You are performing an emergency channel backup operation using a channel backup to close your channels.

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