I'm reviving my efforts at Minds recruitment. This time, my approach is just to cross-post from SN. Let's see if that works better.

lol, yea i'm convinced these bxlt12 people are worse than shitcoiners

All marketing, none of the understanding of why what they're pushing for is completely retarded... but somehow Lightning needs it

For those that don't know:

1. It's a reinvention of Tor for invoices, too slow and unreliable for real world usage
2. The privacy benefits are a hoax, Lightning has all the privacy features without it
3. It's shitcoin compliant, being pushed by ECash neobanker spooks wanting to sell you EDollars

To make matters worse, they cite Nostr as a usecase when Nostr itself already obviates LNURL and Bxlt12 Offers via Kind 21000

Complete bozo's...

At least the retro-futurism theme makes sense for their marketing materials... retro like the shitty Tor implementation that it is, futurisim because it's destined for the same fate.

My interest is piqued.

I have tried to find past weather predictions. You are right: it's not easy.

Thank you for this excellent described story of your node.

I concur with part of your experience (I wrote about it in many of my guides about LN nodes and experiments I've done).

Most of what you describe is also mentioned in my guides, trying to raise an alarm for all those noobs that are jumping straight into running public nodes with no idea what they are doing.

Is very good that old bitcoiners like you are explaining these aspects, so others can learn more and do not do the same steps. I am not saying that were good or bad steps. We are all learning from own mistakes, errors, struggles. Is part of this Bitcoin journey.

What I will want to add to your post are the following.

I see the LN (Lightning Network) as the PAYMENT NETWORK of Bitcoin.

1. Bitcoin onchain is the main base, the settlement. That works pretty well now and represents the VALUE.
2. LN is the "water" flow of this base layer, that needs to flow around, to be used as MONEY. The LN channels are like pipes, through which are flowing the sats (water). And managing these pipes REQUIRE a lot of resources, knowledge, patience, infrastructure.

Bitcoin (onchain) cannot go forward without LN. It will be almost impossible to use it as money soon, only using onchain.
LN cannot exist and function without a strong base layer (onchain). LN is actually just a delayed onchain tx, no more no less. Is just not broadcast in the moment of the payment, it is broadcast and settled onchain only when the peers are closing that channel. But IT IS a real BTC onchain tx.

How I see LN topology from now on:

Level 1

The large base of large public nodes with a lot of liquidity, nodes that can last a long time and put a lot of capital at stake. You also earn more money, but they are the ones who put in the most money. We need this strong base of big nodes ! It doesn't matter if are big companies, banks. They are the ones that keep moving the "water".

Level 2

LSPs (those that are intermediaries between public and private nodes), also with good connections, but not much capital is necessary, but not little either. It is very important for them to have well balanced channels and fees accessible to the "entry level" of users. These LSPs are mainly public nodes by main wallet apps, but also other players that want to be this bridge between public routing and private use of LN

Level 3

The plebs nodes, the poor ones, who want to learn and level up. But very few are going to resist because they don't have much capital. At this level you were... and you couldn't resist. Nothing wrong with that. You did your part, helping the network as much as you could. And thank you for that.

Level 4

Private, mobile nodes (Zeus, Blixt, Mutiny, Breez, Electrum, Phoenix, Nayuta etc.) These depend 100% on the LSPs.
These private nodes DO NOT ROUTE! Just use privately the LN. And is nothing wrong with this. These are the MAIN real users of LN, because are the ones that made the payments.

This way we will have the LN functional. And new users, should choose wisely their position in this network.

Hey there, Graham from Voltage (the LSP Mutiny uses). I'll let the Mutiny team comment on the actual issues, LDK, sweeps, etc because we don't directly work on that. I just wanted to comment that any time this happens we work with Mutiny to send all funds back to users. So I understand the concern and annoyance, but you always get your money back. I know there's a lot of work ongoing to prevent this and make it better so it's one of those subpar solutions until we get the right solutions in place.