Good morning,
>>If you have a reason to open a channel to an arbitrary node, then other nodes
>>have a reason to open a channel to an arbitrary node, which might be you.
>>Even if the
>network grows large, that > also means there are more participants who might
>decide, via whatever heuristic, to channel to your node.
>
>If I am connected to some nodes, but no one connected to me, then all
>of my deposit is used by me only, and is not used by other nodes.
>If I am routing nodes through my node, then it can potentially
>negatively affect availability of my deposit for my own transactions.
>So it seems to me that the best strategy is to connect but accept no
>incoming connections.
>
>How much real is this problem?
You would also have to make your outgoing channels private (not sent by node
gossip) so that others will not route through you. You will not be able to
receive money on-Lightning (since your channels are private, people who are
trying to send money to you on-Lightning will not be able to find a route to
you). You will not earn any money from routing fees (since you are not willing
to have others use your channels for routing).
It has the advantage that you can actually lose Internet connectivity
indefinitely with no possibility of loss of funds, simply because in this mode
of operation, channels are effectively unidirectional only from you to the rest
of the network.
However, I think in the long run, you would prefer to receive funds by
Lightning also, and so cannot use this kind of operation. Consider that in the
future, you may get paid your salary or dividends in bitcoin over Lightning:
your business/employer receives money from its customer over Lightning, it
sends part of that money to sub-contractors and suppliers, and some to you
(employee or shareholder). You then spend the money you receive as
salary/dividends for food and services and other vices you might have, which
are provided by other businesses which have their own shareholders, employees,
sub-contractors, and suppliers.
In such a world, you would have to make your channels public and accept
incoming channels, and at minimum accept incoming money (even if you reject
routing attempts). Since routing can earn you some amount of money as fees,
you probably want to accept at least a few routing attempts at a time to earn
some fees (and offset the fees on your own transactions). This also leads to a
more mesh-like network; the "unidirectional mode" where you keep all your
channels private and only outgoing effectively makes you a second-class member
of the network (and has higher onchain fees: if you have depleted a channel,
there is an incentive to keep it open only if you are willing to accept routing
attempts through you (every open channel is an opportunity to route, and a
channel depleted on your end is full on the opposite end and you can still at
least accept transactions toward you), otherwise, you are better off closing
channels (and incurring fees) so you can recover the channel reserve).
Regards,
ZmnSCPxj
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