Lighning channel stuck on Opening

EDIT: of course the moment i posted this it came online. this can be deleted.

Hi there. I added my first funds to the Lightning channel today, but it’s been stuck on “Opening” for a number of hours now. Not sure what I did yet, but I’d like to delete the Channel and can’t from the UI. The “Delete Channel” button isn’t there. Any way I can do this via SSH?

When you open a channel you have to wait for an on chain transaction to confirm. After 3 confirmations the lightning channel becomes active. 3 confirmations is to prevent issues from a re-org if multiple mines find a block at the same time. If for some reason your channel doesn’t confirm in two weeks or fees get so high its kicked from the mempool earlier then the channel will be forever marked as opening. If this occurs your Bitcoin is still in the on chain wallet and the channel will never open. There is a command to remove a stuck opening channel but I suggest doing a bit of research before doing that, as if the transaction is still in the mempool you WILL lose those Bitcoin.

It also depends what you set the Transaction Fee to. If you choose a 24hr/lowest transaction fee, it could take up to 24 hours to open the channel.

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