Outbound Liquidity

In order to make payments on the lightning network, your node will need to have channels with good peers, and have outbound liquidity. When a channel is opened, the initiator will have all the funds on their side, because they are the one who allocated funds to the creation of the channel in the first place.

In this guide we will be talking about Thunderhub and Terminal Web. Both can be accessed on your node's home dashboard:



Your outbound is your peer's inbound, and vice versa. On Thunderhub this is displayed as a blue and green. Blue = Your outbound. Green = Your inbound. Your peer will see these in opposite. Example:



To open channels, the first thing you must do is send funds to the on chain wallet of your lightning node. You can do this in one of the two dashboards built into Voltage: Thunderhub, or Terminal Web.

For Thunderhub, click receive on the chain side (anchor icon), and then Create Address:



When the address appears, you may send funds to it.

On Terminal Web, click Dashboard --> Receive --> On chain --> Generate Address. For instructions on how to get Terminal Web set up if you haven't done so already, check out the doc Start Terminal Web.



Once funds are on your node's on chain wallet, you can now open a channel. First, you must choose a peer and get their connection string. To keep things simple, usually the top 200 ranked nodes on https://terminal.lightning.engineering are good peers. When you pick one, copy their connection string. Example:



When you have the string copied, you can now open a channel.

Click Open under quick actions, and then click Open > :

You will now need to fill in some information. Let's go over it:

Is New Pear: If you have never peered with them before, click Yes, and you can paste in the connection string. If you have peered with them before, select No, and then select them from the drop down list.

Max Size: Do you want to use all of your on chain funds for the channel?

Channel Size: If you select No for Max Size, then enter in the size of the channel. Some things to keep in mind: the size you choose will be the size the channel will always be. We do not recommend opening channels smaller than 1,000,000 sats in production.

Fee Rate: The default fee you want to charge others on the network to forward payments through the channel. 10000ppm = 1%. This can be changed at any time.

Base Fee: The default fee you want to charge others on the network regardless of the size of payment being forwarded. If you leave blank, the default will be 1 sat.

Fee: This is the on chain fee for opening the channel. You can select auto, or type in the on chain fee rate yourself.

Advanced: A couple options you will likely never use.

Click Open Channel.

From here you can click Channels on the left side Thunderhub menu and in the upper-right you will see Pending. You can see the TXID here. After enough confirmations (Usually 6), the channel will appear in the open category in your Channels dashboard.

Click Dashboard --> Open Channel



You must now enter the Alias or public key(connection string) of who you want to open a channel to. This is a bit different than Thunderhub, but mostly the same. Also enter the size of channel you want to open. We recommend no lower than 1,000,000sats.

You will then be asked to enter a Local Base Fee and Local Fee Rate.

Local Fee Rate: The default fee you want to charge others on the network to forward payments through the channel. 10000ppm = 1%. This can be changed at any time.

Local Base Fee: The default fee you want to charge others on the network regardless of the size of payment being forwarded. If you leave blank, the default will be 1 sat. 1000MSATS=1SAT

Click Next.

It will ask if you want the channel to be private. Private channels are not able to route payments for others on the network, and generally most nodes on the network do not like private channels for this reason. We recommend public channels so you can earn fees along with your peer. If you want to use private channels, we recommend contacting your peer first to make sure they are cool with it. Otherwise, they may close the channel sooner than you would like.

You will then be given an option to add another peer for another channel. This is an exclusive feature of Terminal Web that Thunderhub does not have. You can open multiple channels with a single transaction. As on chain fees go up, we think this is a great way to open many channels quickly and efficiently. Consider opening more at this time.

Click Next when you are done adding to the list of channels you are looking to open:



Finally, select the on chain fee rate for the channel open transaction, and click Open Channel. Wait for confirmations and you will have brand new channels!