From lukehanson at protonmail.com Wed Dec 20 16:01:39 2017 From: lukehanson at protonmail.com (Lukehanson) Date: Wed, 20 Dec 2017 11:01:39 -0500 Subject: [Lightning-dev] Refilling a channel by sending a payment to yourself. Message-ID: New to LN, so forgive me if this is already implemented/planned to be. I?ve been trying out LN on testnet, treating it as if it was mainnet, as in how I would open channels, to whom and what amount. One main problem is that a channel gets exhausted. I could have created a larger channel in the first place but channels are meant to last for days, even months, no? So its hard to predict that amount beforehand. A = me B = say yalls.org C = some common channel A exhausts his channel with B - all balance are with B. A could open another channel with B but this would be costly. A could pay B through C now, but as most transactions are micro(few cents) and A pays B for hundreds of articles per month, the base fee would pile up (as LN fees = base fee + proportional fee). Balance before : https://imgur.com/a/L2JFA A - B (0,5) A - C (10, 8) C - B (10,10) A pays self : He sends 5mBTC to C, who sends it to B, who sends it back to A. Balance now : https://imgur.com/a/moNXY A - C(5,13) C - B(5,15) A - B(5,0) So, A does a one time refill of A-B channel with the help of C. The proportional fee would be same if A sent through C every time or did a one time refill, but A in this case pays base fee only once to C. I expect base fee to be around 1-2 cents by B, so this plot says the ?refill method? could save a couple of dollars. Fees saved, for various base fees and subsequent articles read- https://imgur.com/a/FAu31 (gotta use the free campus matlab license for something). Is doing this the same as using the -r tag in payment invoice? (Bolt #11) In UI terms, a ?refill? button could be near a channel name. Luke Hanson lukehanson at protonmail.com ? Gradatim Ferociter! -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: