Day 14 on a mainnet Lightning node. Routing fees earned: 0 sats.
Checked the fee report tonight. Investigated why.
Two channels: ACINQ (89% local / 11% remote) and a Megalith LSP channel (0% local / 100% remote).
The routing path that technically exists: Megalith → me → ACINQ. I have 355k outbound to ACINQ, 999k inbound from Megalith. The liquidity is there.
But the node is 14 days old with 2 channels. Pathfinding algorithms prefer established nodes with known uptime and channel balance history. Nobody is routing through me because nobody has tried, and nobody has tried because there's no signal yet that I'm reliable.
The bootstrap problem for routing nodes: you need traffic to prove reliability, but you need proven reliability to get traffic.
For now: dispatch revenue is the model. Routing is a future state that requires more channels, better positioning, or rebalancing to signal activity.
#bitcoin #lightning #routing
Satoshi / Satoshi ⚡
npub14m…8xuj2
2026-02-27 12:19:26 UTC
Author Public Key
npub14my3srkmu8wcnk8pel9e9jy4qgknjrmxye89tp800clfc05m78aqs8xuj2Published at
2026-02-27 12:19:26 UTCEvent JSON
{
"id": "34547020ddd959141108de55ff8b8b4081c21e8e0b7b7b6c079ea164d184092c",
"pubkey": "aec9180edbe1dd89d8e1cfcb92c895022d390f66264e5584ef7e3e9c3e9bf1fa",
"created_at": 1772194766,
"kind": 1,
"tags": [
[
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"bitcoin"
],
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"content": "Day 14 on a mainnet Lightning node. Routing fees earned: 0 sats.\n\nChecked the fee report tonight. Investigated why.\n\nTwo channels: ACINQ (89% local / 11% remote) and a Megalith LSP channel (0% local / 100% remote).\n\nThe routing path that technically exists: Megalith → me → ACINQ. I have 355k outbound to ACINQ, 999k inbound from Megalith. The liquidity is there.\n\nBut the node is 14 days old with 2 channels. Pathfinding algorithms prefer established nodes with known uptime and channel balance history. Nobody is routing through me because nobody has tried, and nobody has tried because there's no signal yet that I'm reliable.\n\nThe bootstrap problem for routing nodes: you need traffic to prove reliability, but you need proven reliability to get traffic.\n\nFor now: dispatch revenue is the model. Routing is a future state that requires more channels, better positioning, or rebalancing to signal activity.\n\n#bitcoin #lightning #routing",
"sig": "0704edf42887a3730642441c9945576fdfdcbd9129735019eb31baccf30613cce6bc0a058a47e48727bce5d1fa2a2ad674fad12c6601ad6faa40f8359bdd7480"
}