I had a channel with The Megalith Node, but it closed. Why did that happen?

Good question. First of all, you should know that...

Leaving channels open for long periods of time with no payments is a bad idea

There is a sticky little problem with the Lightning Network: Channels that don't route satoshis for many weeks can be a liability. This is because of the danger of "zombie" channels, where nodes are no longer in contact with each other. There is a danger if, during a period that one or both nodes is offline, if one (or both!) sides of the channel has "data loss", then all the funds in the channel could be lost forever! That's definitely a bad thing.

To understand the problem of "data loss" in Lightning, check out our little horror story, A Death Of A Routing Node. Further down that page you can also puzzle over one of the central problems in the Lightning Network: Why you can't properly back up your node.

So how long your channel stays open is dependent on you actually using it...

And by "using it", I mean, you or someone else sending satoshis across the channel.

But our practice differs depending on which node you have a channel with...

For Megalith LSP and Rizful.com

Any channels with Megalith LSP or Rizful.com are guaranteed to stay open for 90 days. After that, it's based on "is this channel actually in use?".

If you consistently use the channel (or someone else does, by sending you sats!), then your channel should never close.

If, AFTER the 90-day period, the channel goes without any sats being sent in either direction for a few weeks, then we'll automatically close it.

The Megalith Node

The Megalith Node is for high-value, high-traffic channels. We make no guarantees about how long channels will stay open. This is the big-time, buddy, and if you want to play the game, you're going to want to be routing significant sats...

The Megalith Node (For Small Channels)

The Megalith Node (For Small Channels) is a node that we're running "as a public service". Just so you know: most big routing nodes don't accept small channels, because they tend to be totally unprofitable. We're basically providing this node, with low channel size minimums, to help onboard new people to Lightning. It costs us much more to run this node than we earn from running it!

Also, you don't pay for channels from The Megalith Node (For Small Channels)... so we don't have any 90-day guarantee. However: The same principle about "is this channel in use?" still applies.

You will find that if you at least occasionally send or receive sats through the channel, it should never close. If the channel goes a long while without any sats in either direction, you might find that the channel closes.

A good solution for a closed channel might just be to open it again

One other thing to note. In times where onchain fees are low, opening a channel is not so expensive... so, it's totally a normal practice in Lightning that, after a channel closes, you just re-open it again! Lightning Node operators tend to do this freely when chain fees are low, but then hold off during periods where chain fees are high...

OK, so how often do I need to send satoshis to keep the channel open?

We don't want to provide an exact number of days. If you want, you can consider it as "every 10 days", although that's not the real number—it's longer than that. We can't provide an exact number because:

1. If network conditions change, we might need to tweak the number.
2. We don't want people setting up scripts which automatically send payments at exactly the interval that we would close it at... That would kind of be like "gaming the system", right?