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PLEBNET for plebs

Welcome to the Plebnet! We've outlined the main 'guide' on this page. Follow the articles here in order to gain a better understanding of the steps required to join the PlebNet, and getting your node up & running. If you'd like to simply browse around, you can view all our pages Special:AllPages.

Welcome to Plebnet

Welcome to Plebnet

Please read the above link before anything else! Contains useful introduction and tips.

Getting Started

Are you brand new and perhaps don't quite understand lightning? Do you not have your own node yet? Are you not yet in the Plebnet telegram group?

Please see the Getting started page.

Claim your node

For telegram, DM @cheeserobot and then /claim your node (follow the instructions, you will need to sign a message with your node to prove you are owner of the node).

Then, in the plebnet group announce your node with /node. If you see your own node, success. Repeat in other groups which support CheeseRobot with /node.

Additionally, Amboss.space is one of the best websites for looking up nodes and their basic information. People may go to Amboss to browse your node's info. You can claim your node on Amboss which will allow you personalize your node's profile and add additional information. Use these instructions: Claim on Amboss

Opening Channels

The first question which a pleb has after (or even before) the node is synced "who should I open channel with"

I would say - with a mentor who is willing to spend time with you, teach you the ropes, mentor and guide you to be a better node runner

Of course in the age of google, internet, and instant gratification, this thought can be frowned upon but there is no replacement for a mentor in your journey as node runner.

For information relating to lightning channels, including methods to get inbound liquidity see: Opening channels

Maintaining Proper Node Hygiene

Maintaining node hygiene

Node Hardware

Node Hardening

UPS (Uninterrupted Power Supply)

Backup/Recovery

The following link contains some important information about channel backups and recovery solutions so that you have a better idea of how to keep your funds safe.

Backup/Recovery

Let’s Get Personal

Your node can be customized to appear as a name (alias) rather than just a bunch of random letters and numbers. You can also set a color for your node that will show up on various lightning-related websites and programs.

Setting a node alias

Upgrades

Upgrading Umbrel Node

Balance of Satoshis

Balance of Satoshis, or BoS, is a set of commands for working with LND balances. It can do similar things as interfaces like ThunderHub or RideTheLightning. However, your options are much wider with BoS, and you will need it if you want to set up a telegram bot with your node (to get notifications whenever channels are opened/closed, whenever you forward a payment, whenever your node goes offline, and to get automatic channel backups for safety).

For more information, and common BoS commands see: Balance of Satoshis.

Installation: process for Umbrel - Installing BoS. Includes instructions for setting up BoS telegram bot.

LND Configuration Settings Overview

Click the link below for information related to setting up channel size limits, predefined fees on new channels, setting up watchtowers, and other optimization settings.

LND Configuration Settings

Running A Profitable Routing Node

The profitability of a routing node is like for any business - revenue minus costs. Revenue consists of fees that your node collects when routing transactions. Costs consist of channel close/open fees, costs to move sats to your node, channel rebalance costs, and loop in/outs. Therefore, your node is profitable as long as revenue minus costs is positive. Tracking nodes's p&l on a weekly basis may give you a good idea of how your node is progressing towards profitability. It is important to have KPIs for your node which you can measure before you can improve it.

Profitability is an important objective to keep in mind, but it takes time to get there. So when beginning your Lightning journey, it's essential to keep an open mind and be prepared to learn. There is no right or wrong way to develop your node, so it comes down to the strategy that you opt to follow. Allocate your capital strategically and be mindful of the costs (channel open/close, rebalancing, etc) and they do add up.

We talk about channel girth (size in sats) quite a bit, but the quality of your peer is more important than girth. In other words, you can have a very liquid 2mil sats channel and an illiquid 10mil channel. With that being said, a girthier channel to a quality peer is better.

A quality peer is a well-maintained active node that can help you get more traffic. One metric that you can look at when selecting a peer is centrality - how close your node is to the center of the graph as opposed to being on the outside. In addition, here are some of the tools that can help optimize your node's centrality: lnnodeinsight - has a channel simulator to test centrality before establishing a channel with a node; gridflare - provides node recommendations to improve centrality.

Your node will have a mix of channels of different sizes. In general, it does not make sense to keep liquidity in channels with inactive peers. You'd want to re-allocate your inactive liquidity either through circular rebalancing or through closing inactive channels and utilizing the freed-up liquidity elsewhere. You will incur fees either way, so it comes down to weighing pros/cost of the options. Based on our experience, mixing small channels with big channels does not impact a node's routing ability.

Terminal Web classifies nodes into good and pending and assigns a score. Based on our experience, the score does not materially affect routing, even though it helps attract other nodes to connect to yours (sort of like a marketing tool). You can use the Terminal Score Debugger tool to debug and optimize your node's score.

Balance of Satoshis is an excellent tool to help you optimize channel rebalancing. It'll show you routing hops along with fees for each hop. You can then further optimize rebalancing cost by excluding expensive nodes.

The following section discuss strategies and options you have available to run a profitable routing node.


Fees And Profitability (Includes instructions for automatically-adjusting fees, and automatic KPI script!)

Balancing Nodes

Help! I do not see any routing through my node

Help! My sats are only moving in one direction

Playground / Sandbox

Click the image below to get information on Plebnet Playground, a place where you can learn and use the lightning network without risking any real money (signet).

Plebnet Playground Logo

FAQ

A selection of questions frequently asked in plebnet groups. FAQ

Resources

Resources

All Pages