We have learned working with businesses that many node runners are starting from ground zero when it comes to the Lightning Network. Creating a node with Voltage is a simple 2-minute process. But what's next? Finding inbound liquidity to receive payments has always been a challenging step in the process. Today, that got much more simple.
Voltage node runners just got a big quality-of-life boost! With the click of one button, all users running a Voltage node may claim 500,000 sats of inbound liquidity from the main Voltage node. The purpose of this service is to immediately help onboard merchants and businesses, as well as general node runners. No more searching and waiting for channels. You can start using Lightning even faster.
Inbound liquidity is Lightning Network terminology for the value you can receive into your node. Having inbound liquidity is required to receive payments. It has always been challenging getting that initial liquidity, but we are tackling that problem head-on for our customers.
To send payments, you will still need to fund your node so that you can pay someone else, but our new inbound solution will enable node runners to receive payments and get started quickly and immediately.
You should see a widget at the top of your node's dashboard to use this new feature. You can click the 'Request Channel' button and you're done. Our system will open a channel to your node and give you the transaction so you can watch the channel open process. As soon as your channel has 3 confirmations, it's ready to use! The widget will disappear after your channel has been opened. Currently, this feature is only available to nodes running in Voltage, but we'll be expanding liquidity services to more of the network as we develop.
If you have any questions or comments either email us at support@voltage.cloud, or join us in Discord. Happy building!
