I have used Lightning Network before, and I know how to run my channel on either mobile or desktop. But lately, I have only used mobile nodes because it is much easier and on the go. I have discovered that you must have a node well connected to save up on routing fees or at least be connected to a node that is well connected to save up on costs.
If connected to a node that is not closer to where your payment is going, you will have many routing fees, and it won't be cheap, and at times it can get closer to what on-chain are. No matter to what node you connect your channel, one thing will never change the commit fee or reserve fee, which is the amount of money you will need to close your channels, and as such, you can't spend it. On a channel with at least 0.05BTC liquidity, the minimum will be 0.0005BTC. In my case, I only hold one channel with 0.011, so at current on-chain fees, the Commit fee is just around 0.00022BTC.
I have made over 50 transactions on my channel, which means that the Reserve fee is equal to what I spent sending through the layer one network. But the commit fee will increase as the on-chain costs increase. Right now, the average transaction is $2, so my reserve fee is around 0.0002bTC when transaction fees on the Bitcoin network go up, my reserve fee will also increase, probably between 0.0005 to 0.004. At that point, to justify such a fee, I would have to have realized at least some 200 transactions or more.
You may think that my LN channel would have paid off over time because of all the fees I have to save up while my channel is open. Still, the truth is the commit fees are money you can't use but is yours, and that money could be a lot less if the block size on0-chain were allowed to increase, but that would kill the routing transaction business, so 1MB blocks it is. And the more channels you have, the more money you will have to reserve and not have available.
Not to forget that I had to pay around 0.5% to empty my channel in the first place to have enough room to receive payments. Lightning Network works with pre-funded channels that mean you will always have more money than you need to have your channels. And LN supporters will tell you that LN channels pay over time. They forget that the reserve fee increases as on-chain increases, which means you have to use your liquidity to justify the fee.
I am from El Salvador. If I put what the government gave me for free on my channel, 1/3 of it would be to pay the Commit fee, and I do not include the liquidity fee or the on-chain transactions. If I want to use LN decentralized, my government bonus won't cover all the costs I will pay to have my channel.
I can run my channel because I have more money than most Salvadorians, but many people in that country will not know what it is to have real Bitcoin without any custodian. To have a channel with at least 1m satoshis, you will have to pay at least $10 or more to a funding channel service, if not more.
I can have the funds on my channels and fund them myself and pay for the transactions fees and the exchange fees, but if my neighbor can't afford the same fees, that means my neighbor becomes the weakest link on the chain. And I only hold one channel to save on costs, which means that my privacy gets compromised because I can't afford multiple channels.
The application I am using on my mobile phone is Simple Bitcoin Wallet, the most advanced LN wallet I know. You can receive URL invoices, payments like the game Bitcoin Bouncing offers. It gives you better stats on your routing fees and a clear picture of your expenses as well. So I would recommend that application to those willing to research LN.
My channel is connected to the walletofsatwshi.com node. That way, transactions between my channel and the Wallet of Satoshi service are almost free. That way, I save on routing costs. If you are from El Salvador and you will use Chivo at some point, you should open your channel to their node. If you're going to use FixedFloat a lot, you could connect your channel to their node. The closer to the final destination you are, the cheaper routing fees will get.
I have paid very little on routing fees, just around 239 satoshis, because I have open a channel to the node that moves most of my transactions. Still, if I choose another node, my routing fees will be much higher, and because most of the people that I exchange use Wallet of Satoshi, so I save on costs because I am connected to the same node, but my compromise is privacy because that node pretty much knows all of my transactions. I can't open more channels. After all, I don't need it and two because I don't have more funds to do it. If I lived in El Salvador, my channels would probably be Chivo node and Wallet of Satoshi node.
Lightning Network is pretty expensive if you are not willing to use custodians. Since the weakest links are forced to use custodians pretty much soon, everyone will be opening channels to custodian nodes to save on fees. If my Salvadorian friend can't afford his channel, I will have to connect to the node that does his transactions to save on costs.
People not able to afford on-chain fees affect the whole network because if you want to transact with those who only use custodians, you have to connect to that. So your privacy is gone too because your neighbors can't afford on-chain transactions.
Lightning Network is how banks destroy Bitcoin because now your LN custodian will be your new bank, and your funds are not insured by any law that I know.
