Quote from: d_eddie on Today at 05:52:29 PM

Quote from: cAPSLOCK on August 21, 2021, 06:05:47 PM

Lightning thoughts.

I want to spearhead a movement for cypher-punk inspired idealist zealots begin to run lightning nodes that have low, or even ZERO FEES.

One way to make lightning not become what people all worry about (banks) would be for the people who want to see the system run as counter to the existing one to make that happen themselves.

In fact, I think people who complain about the risks of centralization and exploitation in lightning have something they can do that is far more powerful than complain.

And that is to be the change you want to see. Run a damn node, and run it the way you think Bitcoin should work!

For those who care about the direction of bitcoin... there really are only three choices.

1. Complain.
2. Fork bitcoin.
3. Join us.

*EDIT* Are zero fees dangerous for spam etc? Exploitable?

More and more often I find myself nodding when I read your posts.
An ELI5 about setting up a Lightning node could be useful.
Pointers?

Well. A bitcoin node is not too heavy a task. You can do that on any "sometimes on" computer, but a lightning node takes a little more dedication (and the doing of it will also flesh out why a conservative approach to the blocksize limit is smart.

When lightning was brand new (reckless etc) I spun up a node on a QNAP using a docker image i created. That was one of the dumbest things ever. I made something completely NOT ready for production in a containerized format. Bitch to maintain.

But currently my suggestion is Raspiblitz!
https://github.com/rootzoll/raspiblitz

It's not too hard out of the box, follows the FOSS ethos quite well, and can be extended to various power-user features.

Buying a little RPI and a 1T hard drive (mine is still 500g. I have to upgrade soon) that can be ALWAYS ON is how lightning is going to work. The more of us willing to do it at home, the more decentralized the network will be.

But the instructions at the Raspiblitz github are good.

It is a project that DOES require a minimum of dedication. But once you have it up and running it's not terribly hard to maintain. One of my biggest "problems" is when I set it up i put a little pittance of BTC on it, and kept adding now and then, but over the last few years the value of the damn thing has gone up a bit. Lol.

Brings up another point... Be conservative and intentional about opening channels. Every open costs a TX, and so will each close.

I recently opened channels to nodes in:
Nigeria
El Salvador
Venezuela
Cuba
Afghanistan

And for those my fees were all ZERO. But recently I just dropped ALL my fees to zero.

The thought of quietly bringing down the government of Cuba while they are not looking was just too awesome to pass up.

If you get into it and want help, reach out... I will help how I can. I'll open a channel to you on one of my nodes too if you like!