Builder's Guide
  • Welcome to the Builder's Guide to the LND Galaxy!
  • The Lightning Network
    • Overview
    • Payment Channels
      • Lifecycle of a Payment Channel
      • Watchtowers
      • Understanding Sweeping
      • Etymology
    • The Gossip Network
      • Identifying Good Peers on the Lightning Network
    • Pathfinding
      • Finding routes in the Lightning Network
      • Channel Fees
      • Multipath Payments (MPP)
    • Lightning Network Invoices
      • Understanding Lightning Invoices
    • Making Payments
      • The Payment Cycle
      • Timelocks
      • ⭐Hashed Timelock Contract (HTLC)
      • Payment Etymology
      • ⭐What Makes a Good Routing Node
      • Understanding Submarine Swaps
      • Instant Submarine Swaps
    • Liquidity
      • ⭐Understanding Liquidity
      • Managing Liquidity on the Lightning Network
      • Liquidity Management for Lightning Merchants
      • How to Get Inbound Capacity on the Lightning Network
      • Lightning Service Provider
    • L402: Lightning HTTP 402 Protocol
      • Macaroons
      • L402
      • 📋Protocol Specification
      • Implementations and Links
    • Taproot Assets
      • Taproot Assets Protocol
      • Taproot Assets on Lightning
      • Edge Nodes
      • Taproot Assets Trustless Swap
      • FAQ
      • Glossary
  • Lightning Network Tools
    • LND
      • 🛠️Get Started
      • lnd.conf
      • First Steps With LND
      • Wallet Management
      • Sending Payments
      • Atomic Multi-path Payments (AMP)
      • Receiving Payments
      • Unconfirmed Bitcoin Transactions
      • Channel Fees
      • Inbound Channel Fees
      • Macaroons
      • Configuring Watchtowers
      • Pathfinding
      • Blinded Paths
      • Key Import
      • Secure Your Lightning Network Node
      • Configuration of a Routing Node
      • Quick Tor Setup
      • Configuring Tor
      • Enable ‘Neutrino mode’ in Bitcoin Core
      • Send Messages With Keysend
      • Partially Signed Bitcoin Transactions
      • Bulk onchain actions with PSBTs
      • Sweeper
      • Debugging LND
      • Fuzzing LND
      • LND API documentation
      • Channel Acceptor
      • RPC Middleware Interceptor
      • HTLC Interceptor
      • NAT Traversal
      • Recovery: Planning for Failure
      • Migrating LND
      • Disaster recovery
      • Contribute to LND
    • Lightning Terminal
      • What is Lightning Terminal?
      • 🛠️Get litd
      • Run litd
      • Integrating litd
      • Demo: Litd Speed Run
      • Connect to Terminal
      • Recommended Channels
      • Rankings
      • Health Checks
      • Liquidity Report
      • Opening Lightning Network Channels
      • Managing Channel Liquidity
      • Autofees
      • AutoOpen
      • LND Accounts
      • Loop and Lightning Terminal
      • Loop Fees
      • Pool and Lightning Terminal
      • Command Line Interface
      • Troubleshooting
      • Lightning Node Connect: Under the hood
      • LNC Node Package
      • LITD API Documentation
      • Privacy and Security
      • Privacy Policy
      • Terms of Use
    • Loop
      • 🛠️Get Started
      • The Loop CLI
      • Autoloop
      • Static Loop In Addresses
      • Instant Loop Outs
      • Peer with Loop
      • Loop API Documentation
    • Pool
      • Overview
      • Quickstart
      • 🛠️Installation
      • First Steps
      • Accounts
      • Orders and Asks
      • Sidecar Channels
      • Zero-confirmation Channels
      • Channel Leases
      • Batch Execution
      • Account Recovery
      • Pool API Documentation
      • FAQs
    • Taproot Assets
      • Get Started
      • First Steps
      • Taproot Assets Channels
      • Asset Decimal Display
      • Become an Edge Node
      • RFQ
      • Collectibles
      • Universes
      • Asset Loop
      • Debugging Tapd
      • Multisignature
      • Minting Assets With an External Signer
      • Lightning Polar
      • Operational Safety Guidelines
      • Taproot Assets API Documentation
    • Aperture
      • ⚒️Get Aperture
      • LNC Backend
      • LNC Mailbox
      • Pricing
    • Faraday
      • 🛠️Get Started
      • The Faraday CLI
      • Faraday API Documentation
  • LAPPs
    • Guides
      • Use Polar to Build Your First LAPP
        • Setup: Local Cluster with Polar
        • Setup: Run the Completed App
        • Setup: Run the App Without LND
      • Add Features
        • Feature 1: Connect to LND
        • Feature 2: Display Node Alias and Balance
        • Feature 3: Sign and Verify Posts
        • Feature 4: Modify Upvote Action
      • Make Your own LNC-powered Application
    • Next Steps
  • Community Resources
    • Resource List
    • Lightning Bulb 💡
    • Glossary
    • FAQ
Powered by GitBook
On this page
  • Base fee
  • Fee rate

Was this helpful?

  1. The Lightning Network
  2. Pathfinding

Channel Fees

PreviousFinding routes in the Lightning NetworkNextMultipath Payments (MPP)

Last updated 2 years ago

Was this helpful?

In the Lightning Network, routing nodes are able to charge a fee for forwarding payments, so-called Hash-Time-Locked-Contracts (HTLCs). This compensation is necessary to incentivize the efficient allocation of capital in the network to be able to receive and send fees inside of the network.

On the HTLC level, channel fees are the difference between the HTLC sent to the routing node, and the HTLC sent from the routing node onwards. As an example, if you are presented a 1000 satoshis invoice from a node one hop away that charges 1 satoshi, you will send an HTLC over 1001 satoshis to the routing node, which sends a 1000 satoshis HTLC to the final recipient.

As fees are included in the payment, and all HTLCs contingent on the same preimage, you can only charge fees for successful payments.

Fees are applied only once per peer and per channel. Each peer can independently set their fee policies for all their channels, which are applied to the capital in the outoing channel in the event of a forward. Meaning, as you push a payment to your neighbor node, you are able to charge a fee, and as payments are pushed to you, your neighbor charges the fee, even if the channel was created by you. Another rule of thumb is that when your capital in a channel is depleted, you get to charge the fee.

There are two kinds of fees, the base fee and the fee rate.

Base fee

The base fee is a fixed sum that is charged on each forward, typically 1 satoshi. You may also set this base fee higher or to 0, or charge any amount of millisatoshis.

As each forward costs you computational power and storage, the base fee is meant to compensate you for your efforts of forwarding any payment. For example, for each new channel state your node has to keep a new revocation key on file. In case you are using a watchtower, this information has to be sent and stored on the watchtower as well. Such information has to be stored until the channel is closed, which can be costly. Choose your base fee wisely!

Fee rate

The fee rate is a proportion of the payment that you forward, typically measured in parts per million (ppm).

It is meant to compensate you for the capital that you commit to your Lightning channels.

Read more: Hash Time-lock Contracts
Read more: Update your channel fees