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How to get Inbound Liquidity on the Lightning Network

How to get Inbound Liquidity on the Lightning Network

There are several ways you can find inbound liquidity on LN.

1. Wait

If your node is up 24x7 and you have some outgoing channels, the network will connect to you if you simply wait.

However, it might take a couple of weeks to get a significant amount of incoming liquidity, and ideally you want your outgoing liquidity to match too.

So open a few large channels, and simply wait a few weeks.

2. Purchase things or simulate purchasing things with on-chain payouts.

If you open a channel, and spend 50% of the channel capacity on something, perhaps even sending back to your own wallet via a service like

then you could have at least one channel with inbound liquidity, plus the funds to open another channel elsewhere.

Step 1: open a channel to provider
Step 2: create a new deposit address to send bitcoin back to
Step 3: perform LN to onchain swap at provider for 50-80% of the channel capacity which you just opened
Step 4: wait 10-15 mins for your funds to arrive
Step 5: open a new channel to a different provider with the returned funds

This process could be repeated with several parties, including actual purchases of goods and services, and result in several channels with inbound liquidity as long as the channels remain active.

3. Purchase inbound liquidity

The following services will allow you to purchase incoming liquidity to your node:

Yalls

Yalls sells inbound channels

Need an inbound channel? $24.88 USD for 16.77mm sat

(was $0.45 for 2m sat)

Bitrefill Thor

Thor sells inbound channels

Thor allows you to open private channels with our well-connected Lightning node,
on demand, with custom capacities (300,000 to 16,000,000 sats).

You can pay with any of our supported payment methods: Bitcoin, lightning, your
Coinbase balance, or with any of the 4 other currencies we support!

LNBig

LNBig openchannel service sells inbound channels, first one free

We will open only one channel on you.
The one node is the one channel.
In next time we will run paid service
too for more channels for an one unique node. 

Coincept

Coincept sells inbound channels.

"Min channel size is 100k sats and max is 25M. We plan to increase the maximum channel size in the future. The fee is 20bps (0.2%) + channel opening/closing fees. Channels will be kept open for at least 1 month and longer if there is any activity."

LND Routing

LND Routing sells inbound channels via a python script the user runs. Up to 1.5BTC channels, minimum 100k sats. Fees not specified other than "Competitive pricing and fees".

Amboss Magma

Amboss Magma offers a marketplace for channels.

Blocktank

Blocktank sells a channel opening service for a free.

Voltage inbound

Volatge offer inbound liquidity to onboarded customers according to this blog post

lnd3.vanilla.co.za

lnd3.vanilla.co.za sells 1m or 2m sat channels for $5 in sats.

Loop in/out of LN and onchain

Lightning Loop is a non-custodial service offered by Lightning Labs to bridge on-chain and off-chain Bitcoin using submarine swaps.

The service can be used in various situations:

  • Acquiring inbound channel liquidity from arbitrary nodes on the Lightning network
  • Depositing funds to a Bitcoin on-chain address without closing active channels
  • Paying to on-chain fallback addresses in the case of insufficient route liquidity

Author's note: when time allows a more detailed overview with examples may be provided

Pool

Pool is a non-custodial, peer-to-peer marketplace for Lightning node operators to buy and sell channels.

3rd party examples

4. Open channels with parties who will reciprocate

The following parties will open channels back to you if you open channels to them:

5. Participate in a group loop (aka cyclic superhub, aka supernode, aka liquidity swap triangles, squares and pentagons, aka ring of fire)

Back in late 2017/early 2018 I had this idea about 3 way channel openings to share the transaction costs equally between parties, while achieving a channel opening for all. There wasn't any support for it in South Africa.

Proof:

Subject: [Cryptocoins] LND mainnet node live
Date: Sat, 17 Mar 2018 11:37:39 +0200
From: Bretton Vine <REDACTED>
To: Cryptocoins Chat <cryptocoins@REDACTED>

My LND mainnet node is live

02262bbc21c171bc91a1d6bbf89571c95873849b9a60d3ea9671b777d852d39ecd

Please consider opening a channel with me, I only have 240k sats available
atm to open to 2 other parties.

I'd like at least one supernode setup.

Me -> you -> someone -> me.

And then we each have one outgoing, one incoming channel elsewhere.

Lets get the Africa supernode fabric going :)

Earn.com $1 tasks from ICO spam funded this.

I believe I was influenced by these writings on cyclic superhubs which explore the idea in detail: https://zmnscpxj.github.io/offchain/cyclicsuperhubs.html

Since then the concept of liquidity groups has independently exploded in the form of

Other documentation

There are other guides on this topic such as:

Page updates

Please leave a comment with a link to service if you'd like to be included.

Updates are done on a best effort basis.

@bretton
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bretton commented May 4, 2019

On a fresh node with 5 outgoing channels, no purchased / incoming-on-request channels, it took 15 days for the first automatic lnbig connection with an additional 2 channels from other lnbig nodes within two days. So simply waiting will eventually provide some connectivity. (mid-April to start-May 2019)

@bretton
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bretton commented May 6, 2019

Unconfirmed, however this reddit comment says these guys will do incoming liquidity too:

@peername
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You can also request a channel via our website: https://peernode.net/

@bretton
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bretton commented Nov 10, 2020

You can also request a channel via our website: https://peernode.net/

seems gone now? removed again.

@bretton
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bretton commented Nov 10, 2020

@stopfeds
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You can add https://lightningnetwork.plus/
It is a platform to participate in "ring of fires". More details here: https://lightningnetwork.plus/about

@bretton
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bretton commented Jul 27, 2021

You can add https://lightningnetwork.plus/

thanks! added something, interesting to see it works elsewhere, good luck

@niteshbalusu11
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Hello!

hey team. Unfortunately my node went down a few days ago and I have two channels open with LNBig-13 and I have outdated SCB, I’m reaching out to my peers for initiating a force closure.
Could you please force close on me?

Here’s my pubkey: 02827ff9e6664c1608e1cb65182c73c68395cb079492a8a4482045c4561c5aa179
You should see 2 channels for this. Please help?

@bretton
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bretton commented Aug 15, 2021

Here’s my pubkey: 02827ff9e6664c1608e1cb65182c73c68395cb079492a8a4482045c4561c5aa179
You should see 2 channels for this. Please help?

sorry about this, I don't think anyone will see your message except for me getting a github notice, or someone reading the comments long after.

I don't have any channels open with your node.

perhaps send a message to https://twitter.com/lnbig_com and find contact details for other nodes?

@CoinceptLN
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Bretton,

We discovered some great service providers from your list, particularly lightningnetwork.plus. Thank you for this!

I wanted to pass on that I just launched Coincept.com, an inbound channel liquidity service on our website for our node The Captain (https://1ml.com/node/0202e7727ee46d943a44c7bf0dce14220a839630dee67d03446bf935178b55a0df). We have a web interface where you can select your channel capacity, input your node pubkey, and pay your invoice via on-chain or lightning.

Min channel size is 100k sats and max is 25M. We plan to increase the maximum channel size in the future. The fee is 20bps (0.2%) + channel opening/closing fees. Channels will be kept open for at least 1 month and longer if there is any activity.

If anyone has any questions feel free to reach out.

@bretton
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bretton commented May 3, 2022

Pulled in some missing sites from https://lightningnetwork.plus/posts/234

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