⭐ Merited by darosior (1)
Does that support the theory that Lightning node operators who stake more of their capital in Lightning will charge more, not less, to route transactions?
I would say that large nodes are now experimenting with the fees to see how the settings can affect the number of routed payments and their earnings.
Plus maintaining the node/rebalancing channels requires specialization. It's right that they charge more for providing efficiency, amd liquidity in LN.
That's a good point. I did some calculations yesterday.
You're right. The LN fees for larger payments would be nowhere near subsatoshi level if all nodes charged 0.1%-0.25% per transaction. Longer routes would be completely cost-inefficient. I believe that there will be plenty of smaller nodes offering lower fees. Currently, most LN nodes route payments at the default settings. Here are some of my calculations. Assumptions: BTC price - $10.000, routed payment value - $30.
LN fee = basefee + (amount * feerate / 1000000)
Default settings:
Currently known LNbig.com settings:
In my opinion, 1200 sat for a $30 transaction is way too much. If such payment was divided into 4 equal parts and sent through 4 different paths consisting of "default nodes" then 1 hop would cost:
That is definitely more cost-efficient and I believe that's what is going to happen in the future to most payments. Some parts of the payments, will be sent through cheaper routes.
LN fee = basefee + (amount * feerate / 1000000)
Default settings:
Currently known LNbig.com settings:
In my opinion, 1200 sat for a $30 transaction is way too much. If such payment was divided into 4 equal parts and sent through 4 different paths consisting of "default nodes" then 1 hop would cost:
That is definitely more cost-efficient and I believe that's what is going to happen in the future to most payments. Some parts of the payments, will be sent through cheaper routes.
If the majority of the network ends up charging as much as LNbig.com or even more then the LN will be mostly known for instant and more anonymous small transactions. Do you think that a $0.12 fee for a $30 transaction being way too high is an over-exaggeration? Consider that there could be longer routes consisting of nodes with similar fee settings. Still, I do agree that nodes should earn more than they do by default, because they might need to rebalance their channels at some point. As far as I remember, someone proposed to increase the default fee settings (the basefee from 1 sat to 5 sat and the feerate from 1 to 500).