note: OP also opened a
GitHub issue, where I replied in detail.
In short,
- when you open a channel, you cannot receive before sending some first
- and it is the channel-opener who pays for the on-chain fees of having the channel closed in the future, for which part of the opener's balance is set aside. When the on-chain fees are as high as recently (~500 sat/vb), the fee set aside can easily be approx 2 mBTC.
As OP opened a channel with a capacity of 2 mBTC (the minimum hardcoded value allowed by Electrum), he basically had no usable balance left.
I only struggle to realize the point of the lightning if:
- It's not meant to be used with such small transactions or channels, that's the point of lightning.
- It's fees tend to be higher than on-chain transactions (except if you have 200 transactions per channel then maybe yes). Because for the amount I payed here, I could've sent many on-chain transactions with no hassle. (I've made 0 transactions other than opening/closing channel).
Also what's the point of saying that minimal channel capacity is 2mBTC if it's often impossible to use the channel with such small capacity? (since we have Ordinals now - I guess it will be impossible to use from now on). Which again brings me to the first point, which is "If i have to put a lot of money in a single Lightning channel, what's the point of lightning network when the purpose of lightning are payments equivalent of $5-$10? To save on fees? How If the channel creator will be charged heavily with unpredictable fee-spikes that are doubled... or tripled or whatever.
I know that I'm speaking in layman's terms, but it's so misleading and user unfriendly, it's killing the purpose of lightning when you are better of (and more secure) paying on chain even with higher fees. Electrum will end up being only used by small-group of tech savvy individuals, average bitcoiner shouldn't go through all that.