What is Nostr?
Dr. Hax
npub16v8…eqha
2024-12-03 00:14:44

Dr. Hax on Nostr: I love the idea of the #lightning network, but it's super unreliable outside of ...

I love the idea of the #lightning network, but it's super unreliable outside of trivial amounts of money. And worse, the error messages when it fails are incomprehensible.

For example, I just tried to buy a gift card from bitrefill with ZEUS (nprofile…5fk2) and was told I didn't have enough local funds. The balance is Zeus is larger than the amount I'm trying to send, so that seems like a terrible error message.

The amount is more than I have in any single channel, but that's why I have multiple channels and even a multi-path payment fails with that same error. If I need a bigger channel, 🙄 fine. Tell me that. And tell me how I can increase the size of an existing channel with Olympus.

Here's my point: If I have the #sats, in self-custody in lightning, I should be able to send as many of them as I want. In the event it does fail, I should be presented with an error message that clearly explains why.

This doesn't seem like it is too much to ask.

And, yes, I plan on setting up an always-online lightning node soon enough so I can complain about more lightning software failures, or sing their praises, whichever is appropriate.
Author Public Key
npub16v82nr4xt62nlydtj0mtxr49r6enc5r0sl2f7cq2zwdw7q92j5gs8meqha