Everything I know about Routing Reliability and Liquidity on the Lightning Network
summary
Distinguishes infeasibility vs uncertainty: some payments are impossible without onchain moves while others fail from unknown balances. Uses simulated snapshots, a geometric wealth-distribution polytope and integer linear programming to show many ~100k–1M-sat payments are permanently infeasible, implying roughly a 10× scaling ceiling unless channels are replenished onchain. Finds cycles and asymmetric fees create systemic depletion, fees and retries rise over time, and circuit rank predicts depletion. Argues multi-party channels expand feasible states and that collaborative rebalancing can temporarily restore balance and cut onchain cost.
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chapters (8)
- 0:00Lightning Network routing basics
- 1:06Feasibility vs liquidity in payments
- 8:02Mitigating infeasible payments
- 11:35Wealth distributions in channels
- 19:38Liquidity uncertainty and depletion
- 29:11Redundancy hub-and-spoke models
- 33:06Key takeaways and scaling limits
- 34:52Q&A on multi-party channels
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