Yeah, Phoenix and Breez both handle a lot in the background for you. However, because they do this, you can end up with an unexpectedly high fee when you are receiving a transaction and it exceeds the available inbound liquidity. That can be a bad experience for a non-technical person who doesn't understand why the fee is higher and how they could have avoided it.
For instance, because I knew that Phoenix was going to be creating an actual Lightning channel when I first deposited into it, I sent WAY more sats than I actually wanted to have in the wallet (5 million), so that Phoenix would open a really big channel. Then I swapped them back to on-chain via Boltz.exchange, so I wouldn't have such a large balance in a spending wallet. Leaving me with plenty of inbound liquidity in my Phoenix channel.
No non-technical person who doesn't understand how Lightning works is going to know that they should do this. They will send themselves 100k sats or so, and Phoenix will give them a channel of a few hundred thousand sats, and as they use the wallet more and more, they will be comfortable with keeping a higher balance on it, only to get randomly slapped with a higher fee because they ran out of inbound liquidity in their channel.
Breez's new Misty Breez wallet is looking really interesting for non-technical folks to have a better trust trade-off than going with a custodian, though. It still requires the responsibility of holding your private key, but that should be one of the first things a new Bitcoiner learns anyway. For my kids I will stick with hosting their Lightning wallets for them, but once they care enough to hold their own keys, I might be having them learn on Misty Breez.
As for how to find other nodes to connect to, I have seven channels. Five of them are with other Bitcoiners I know and can reach out to personally if there is ever any issue. They also reach out to me and ask what's up when my node is down. The other two channels that aren't with Bitcoiners I know are with nodes that are operated by services I use personally; namely ACINQ (Phoenix) and Boltz.exchange. As such, I have never had need to purchase a channel from a liquidity provider.
The best channel partners are Bitcoiners you know and can contact directly to troubleshoot issues with your channel.
Dikaios1517
npub1ku…v3lhe
2025-04-04 17:04:21
in reply to nevent1q…dw67
Author Public Key
npub1kun5628raxpm7usdkj62z2337hr77f3ryrg9cf0vjpyf4jvk9r9smv3lheSeen on
wss://relay.brightbolt.netwss://relay.primal.netwss://relay.nostrplebs.comwss://nostr.winewss://relay.damus.ioPublished at
2025-04-04 17:04:21Event JSON
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"content": "Yeah, Phoenix and Breez both handle a lot in the background for you. However, because they do this, you can end up with an unexpectedly high fee when you are receiving a transaction and it exceeds the available inbound liquidity. That can be a bad experience for a non-technical person who doesn't understand why the fee is higher and how they could have avoided it.\n\nFor instance, because I knew that Phoenix was going to be creating an actual Lightning channel when I first deposited into it, I sent WAY more sats than I actually wanted to have in the wallet (5 million), so that Phoenix would open a really big channel. Then I swapped them back to on-chain via Boltz.exchange, so I wouldn't have such a large balance in a spending wallet. Leaving me with plenty of inbound liquidity in my Phoenix channel. \n\nNo non-technical person who doesn't understand how Lightning works is going to know that they should do this. They will send themselves 100k sats or so, and Phoenix will give them a channel of a few hundred thousand sats, and as they use the wallet more and more, they will be comfortable with keeping a higher balance on it, only to get randomly slapped with a higher fee because they ran out of inbound liquidity in their channel.\n\nBreez's new Misty Breez wallet is looking really interesting for non-technical folks to have a better trust trade-off than going with a custodian, though. It still requires the responsibility of holding your private key, but that should be one of the first things a new Bitcoiner learns anyway. For my kids I will stick with hosting their Lightning wallets for them, but once they care enough to hold their own keys, I might be having them learn on Misty Breez.\n\nAs for how to find other nodes to connect to, I have seven channels. Five of them are with other Bitcoiners I know and can reach out to personally if there is ever any issue. They also reach out to me and ask what's up when my node is down. The other two channels that aren't with Bitcoiners I know are with nodes that are operated by services I use personally; namely ACINQ (Phoenix) and Boltz.exchange. As such, I have never had need to purchase a channel from a liquidity provider.\n\nThe best channel partners are Bitcoiners you know and can contact directly to troubleshoot issues with your channel.",
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