Silen Zara @Silen Zara - 1mo
It's pretty obvious what is driving the success of the c= node just by looking at the channel open/close history. Without the CashApp nodes feeding c= there is unlikely to be any routing at all since the fee structure does not support it at all. Only by carefully selecting peers to open channel to with the CashApp funds you are able to create a very well run "routing" machine. You guys are obviously doing this very well but again, it's not possible without the unique position you are in with the CashApp nodes backing it up. I also kinda agree therefor that it's a bit misleading to say the 10% APR is earned from routing while it's just clearly not. Pure routing is something very different than what your are doing. What you are doing is what I would personally call LN liquidity trading. Liquidity trading is what many nodes do but for the rest of us the economics are very different because we actually have to pay to get the liquidity to where we need it.
The only mechanism to earn on LN is from routing fees, so yes, you are technically correct. All earnings from LN fall under that umbrella. What I'm talking about is what the driving force is behind your capacity to route. And that is very obviously the countless CashApp channels c= receives every day, which causes the inbound to be increased and then used as a pressure mechanism to enable the routing. The APR might not come directly from Block, but the liquidity to make it all work is. It's the same as me setting up a separate node that I constantly feed with liquidity and then say I made a huge APR on that node because it routed a bunch. But you may choose to call it APR from routing, and that's fine. I personally think c= categorically works in such a different way compared to any other node that something like APR does not really have meaning anymore and it becomes inappropriate.
