Hello everybody
Where can I set the Fee for the Lightning network? I want to set the Fee to 0 sats.
Thanks
Dejan
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If you use RTL or ThunderHub, there are buttons in their channel management for setting fees.
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Oh thanks, I thought I have to do this at opening the channel.
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Is there a recommended fee amount that I should set?
@Dejan
There are 3 areas you set fees for regarding lighting channels. First is the miners fee set when opening channel set this as you would any other on chain transaction. Second is the fee you charge people for routing through your lightning channel(s). This has two settings one being a set sat rate and the other a fee based on how many sats are routed. Third is the closing channel fee, another on chain transaction when closing the channel and sending back to your wallet. The opening and closing transactions are paid from the node opening the channel.
It is really depends on the channel, your node and how you want your channel to be used. Is more of an art than science but my thoughts are:
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Base fees should cover the opportunity cost of using your channel, i.e while a channel is being used you could miss the opportunity to route a bigger payment for more fee (pretty unlikely). Set to low or 0 and it encourages micro transaction and multi path payments.
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Rate fees should cover how valuable that liquidity is. If you set it too low, it could get used up and you lose the chance to route more. This is also a way of getting a reward for locking funds away. Typically around 200-400ppm is about right for the average channel.
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Set higher fees for channels that are liquidity sinks; I donât think itâs crazy for +1000 to exchanges. I also set high fees for channels that I donât have much outbound capacity, using the last of the funds in a channel should be only for important transactions. May also cut down on failed payment attempts if less people try to use it.
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Set lower fees for channel that you want to be used. I have rates set to zero for channels that have no inbound to hopefully get some transactions to shift the balance that way.
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Iâld recommend you watch what activity your channel get and experiment. Keeping in mind what the cost of opening, closing, rebalancing channels are as a reference to what you should expect to be able re coup.
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Hello @Reach ⌠I have RTL and ThunderHub installed. I am relatively new and have been trying to monitor to learn what I should do 
I joined a swap with âlightning network.plusâ and joined two triangles. One for 2M Sats and one for 500K Sats.
When I look at my channels I see 7 open channels.
In thunderhub I see the local balance / remote balance.
100K - 83.8K / 13.2K
Base Fee: 1 (Satoshi)
Fee Rate: 1 ppm
CTLV Delta: 40
Max HTLC (sats) 99,000
Min HTLC (sats) 1
I just changed all of them to:
- Base Fee: 11,000 (Sats)
- Fee Rate: 300 ppm
My channel Max HTLC (sats) vary in amounts.
20K - 2.5K / 15K
100K - 37K / 60K
500K - 0.3m / 0.2m
2M - 1.9M / 0.1 m
500K - 0.2m / 0.3m
2M - 0.2m / 1.8m
I am curious where I SEE the fees I collectâŚis that in âmempoolâ?
Thank you @Reach
The fees you earn from routing can be found in RTL> Lightning (in the side bar) > Routing or Reports or in ThunderHub > Forwards
Btw, I think your base fees are a bit high at 11,000, even if someone sends 2M in one go, your fees overall is 5800ppm. Highly recommend something below 10 sat, possibly the default 1 sat or even 0.
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Set the fee to 1 instead of 11,000 ? Okay
Is the fee rate % 300ppm realistic or too high?
Thank youâŚI appreciate your insight.
300ppm seems good. Also keep in mind, you may not route much with just a few channels and the nodes you are connected to probably have channels with each other (assumed because you got them from a triangle).
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This is really helpful - thanks. Balancing liquidity with fees is proving difficult so need to test and learn more with different fee settings. Thanks again
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