My lnd node hasn't routed any payments (1 week + since initial setup)

Question

So I finally setup a lightning node (lnd) and according to "feereport" I haven't routed any payments (no fees collected). I have used my node to send payments (yalls, satoshis.place, blockstream...) and also received payments (from my own Eclair wallet) and that works fine (multi hop routes). I also tried lowering the fees my node charges, still no luck. I also (gave away) pushed some remote balance to some channels to make sure I had some out going routes. Any ideas? What is the expected average number of routed payments over some time interval (I know this depends but I no idea what other people are seeing)?

$ lncli listchannels | grep balance
            "local_balance": "99082",
            "remote_balance": "100000",
            "unsettled_balance": "0",
            "local_balance": "299082",
            "remote_balance": "0",
            "unsettled_balance": "0",
            "local_balance": "295312",
            "remote_balance": "34",
            "unsettled_balance": "0",
            "local_balance": "149082",
            "remote_balance": "150000",
            "unsettled_balance": "0",
            "local_balance": "145347",
            "remote_balance": "150000",
            "unsettled_balance": "0",
            "local_balance": "83940",
            "remote_balance": "261405",
            "unsettled_balance": "0",
            "local_balance": "99180",
            "remote_balance": "0",
            "unsettled_balance": "0",

$ lncli feereport | grep sum
    "day_fee_sum": "0",
    "week_fee_sum": "0",
    "month_fee_sum": "0"

$ lncli getnetworkinfo
{
    "graph_diameter": 0,
    "avg_out_degree": 5.5954773869346734,
    "max_out_degree": 509,
    "num_nodes": 1592,
    "num_channels": 8908,
    "total_network_capacity": "9685778073",
    "avg_channel_size": 1087312.311742254,
    "min_channel_size": "1050",
    "max_channel_size": "16777216"
}

Answer 1

I haven't received any fee payments. (...) Any ideas? Or is this expected?

Running a LN node does not guarantee you will collect fees. Fees are collected iff you route a payment for another user, so at this time it appears that no users have routed a payment through your node.

Factors that could affect this: which nodes you are connected to, the liquidity of your channels, the online availability of your node, etc.

Routing fees offer an interesting incentive, but remember the network is still young and not widely utilized. Right now, payments for routing transactions may be rare, but in the future... ?

I also pushed some remote balance to some channels

Worth noting, this is equivalent to making a payment to the node you are connecting to. When the channel is closed, that remote node will be the recipient of the remote balance. So I hope you have made those payments for a reason, otherwise you have given away some of your BTC.

Answer 2

Now that my lnd node has been running a little longer I have routed some payments. Getting your node selected for a route by another node will be highly dependent on your channels, who with, how many and balance but it looks like 1 or 2 routes per week would be typical.

Answer 3

My year 2021 experiences:

My node is 60 days old, my lnnodeinsight rankings on amboss are about 300 (all three), and I have routed 72 payments within the last 28 days. That is still very, very far away from earning some money here.

My experience with routing:

1. Know the liquidity sinks in the network
2. Adjust your fees according to your local liq. (outbound liq.)
3. Connect to nodes with lower fees
4. Try to re-balance your liq. regularly

Unfortunately I.4 costs even more of your expected profitability. There are several very good articles out there about lightning network economics. To summarize that: Do not expect an income from running a lightning node currently - but this may change in the future when lightning get's adopted as payment network.

And also, there are some other benefits:

• Host your own hot wallet
• Hodl bitcoins
• Be part of the new payment age
• Learn running IT at home
• Earn at least any interest (in Europe we have negative interest rates for bank-money since several years now).

Stay tuned.