smallworlnd on Nostr: When _you_ try to make a payment _you_ definitively know the payment amount, and your ...

When _you_ try to make a payment _you_ definitively know the payment amount, and your node can draw any number of paths to some destination to attempt the payment. The path is first constructed from publicly visible gossip on channel sizes and channel fees.

By making payments over time _your_ node keeps that information local, it's not publicly visible gossip. That local record of liquidity success/fails informs the pathfinding algorithm for future payments. That's a rich set of data for understanding where payments can be made and for how much. For more details about the nature of that data in`lnd` , for example, look here: https://docs.lightning.engineering/lightning-network-tools/lnd/pathfinding