LNBϟG on Nostr: I'm certainly sorry that some people saw this as a disappointment, but let's think a ...

I'm certainly sorry that some people saw this as a disappointment, but let's think a little.

Imagine that using my tools and scripts, I get lists of redirected payments through channels and find that in some channels, for example, there hasn't been a single payment for 10 days (meaning no incoming or outgoing payments have passed in the channel for 10 days). I only process those channels that have been open for more than a month. I do this because in my web form, which sells channels, it's written that I will try to take on the obligation not to close a channel for at least one month.

What conclusion can we draw if we are purely a routing node? I concluded that if my goal is to be a routing node, I need to maintain channels with nodes that are actively used and not maintain channels with nodes that don't use the channels. At least, a channel with no payments for 10 days likely has little value for the Lightning network and may indicate that for some reason, some senders in the network decided that redirecting payments through that node to me or from me to that node doesn't make sense, perhaps due to fees and such.

I've closed many channels this way several times, and the statistics afterward showed no drop in redirected payments by amount or earnings. Everything remained as if I hadn't closed those channels.

I always did this when Bitcoin network fees were at their absolute minimum. Usually, it was when the average fee was one, maximum two satoshis per virtual byte, and when the entire mempool was nearly cleared by miners. These were the moments when I did these things.

Additionally, I always start by closing all these channels through cooperative closure. This means that when such a closure occurs, the two nodes agree on fees that are close at that moment. And it was usually one virtual satoshi per byte. So the cost of closing the channel for me or the remote node was at its minimum.

If any node feels it needs to maintain the channel, they can open it again. And my algorithms won't close such a channel for at least a month after opening. If, after this period, payments are still poorly handled, I see nothing wrong with closing the channel again.

Looking for more positives in this scenario, when we close channels that aren't often used, in my case, one payment every ten days, though sometimes I would close channels if there were fewer than three payments in ten days, it's also good for the Lightning Network as it cleans the network graph of channels rarely chosen by senders for payment transmission.

There's also another benefit for myself, because when I mass-close unnecessary channels, it frees up a significant amount of liquidity that I then send to cold storage, as there's always a risk that the node or nodes could be hacked and the funds stolen. So it's always better to keep as few funds on nodes as necessary.