The pace of innovation in Bitcoin is faster than ever, and the scope of projects being built in the ecosystem continues to expand.
As the BItcoin ecosystem grows, this naturally means there are fewer and fewer people who are knowledgeable in all aspects of Bitcoin and Lightning.
Unless keeping up with Bitcoin development is your full-time job (and even if it is), we're all prone to developing gaps in our knowledge and understanding of how Bitcoin, Lightning, and the projects built on top of these protocols work.
To solve that problem, we thought it would be fun to open the floor today for anyone to ask all the Bitcoin & Lightning questions they've felt too embarassed to ask until now.
There is no topic too elementary, and no question too complicated. Just jump in with all your burning questions, and help others solve their questions if you see one you can answer!
This fee is basically a mining fee, because in Phoenix you actually have your own Lightning channel, which takes an on-chain transaction to open the first time. Later on, with this channel already opened, the fee will only be that of a Lightning transfer, so presumably a few sats.
See this table for more details (in the "Fees after" column, since you're running the latest version of Phoenix).
As you can see, you're in the "receiving Lightning with insufficient liquidity" case, i.e. the last line of the table. The fee is actually smaller than what you would have had to pay with the previous version of Phoenix, which didn't have splicing. For more details as to what 'splicing' means in that context, you can take a look at the "Wallet & Tools" section of this newsletter I wrote, or to Phoenix's blog post.
Using Lightning with full control over your funds (i.e. "self-custody") comes at the unescapable cost of having to open a channel. Wallets that don't allow you to have your own channels and private keys are custodial: you trust them not to steal your funds, like a bank.
So you're doing nothing wrong. I would even say, you're doing it right! ⚡️
I agree here. A great example is the monero thread available on top for today. I found some good gauge in there about the potential risks of using monero and if that type of discussion wasn’t allowed or phased out intentionally i wouldn’t have. So I tipped a wonderful explanation some sats and went on my day! I agree on don’t encourage echo chamber.
GG!
Loving visiting my new saloon. Howdy all 🤠! Another day old and Bitcoin wiser!
I'm sorry, what's the "exploit" here? What's the problem he's trying to solve? Because to me, the network is working just fine, and the free market of fees is working as intended.