How to get Inbound Liquidity on LN
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? $0.45 USD 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.
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
4. Open channels with parties who will reciprocate
The following parties will open channels back to you if you open channels to them:
- Singles ads at https://singles.shock.network/
- Advertise your node at https://jolt.market/
- https://lightningpowerusers.com/home/
- https://lightningconductor.net/channels
- https://lightningto.me/ | https://ln2me.com/
- https://ln.zone/
- https://1ml.com/node/03ee180e8ee07f1f9c9987d98b5d5decf6bad7d058bdd8be3ad97c8e0dd2cdc7ba
Other docmentation
There are other guides on this topic such as:
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bretton commentedMay 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)