WARNING - Dishonest Lightning Operator on Node 03cfe3c140e09491db04

1

First I want to mention that I’ve met many very nice people in the lightning community from around the world, since I’ve started my lightning journey :slight_smile:

Unfortunately I came across the a dishonest lightning operator from the Netherlands.

I just want to warn people not to open channels to the node 03cfe3c140e09491db04

Let me explain, I had a verbal agreement on telegram with a guy named Jeroen who is the operator of the mentioned node.

We agreed to open a balanced channel (1M/1M sats) and that he pays me back 1M sats onchain after I opened and split the channel in half.

Well, unfortunately I never heard back from him, although I remind him every day via telegram, but it’s seems he even doesn’t read them.

I think such a behaviour is simply disgusting and puts a bad light on the lightning community.

Any help tracing him down would be appreciated

I also welcome people to connect with my node and help expanding the list of countries my node is already connected to, see Opening balanced channels to various countries

2

Thanks for the warning. Also next time use this tool to rebalance trustlessly: https://github.com/RooSoft/igniter

3

@btc_ln igniter only works if there’s a route back to your node through another channel. mostly it’s not the case.

@Deekee Consider providing balanced channels a service. So maybe you should insist that the counterpart is the one to open a channel, push 1/2 amout through and you pay them back on-chain.

But anyway sorry to hear it happen to you.

4

That’s the way I’m doing it by now :slight_smile:

5

Oh, yeah, igniter is good for triangles and squares. Upon the channel opens participants meant to set their fees high, so nobody rebalances through them. Then, at a certain time every participant sets the fees to the lowest or the same and then do the igniter thing in a circle. We did this on twitter with 3 other participants and we got nicely balanced channels at no cost or risk.

6

Sorry to hear that. I would not close the channel coz you will lose the Sats for sure. Maybe the person got busy. Lets hope you recover the funds.

We discourage this practice in Plebnet with random nodes/persons — only do the procedure with established and trusted nodes.

Thanks for sharing.

7

Finally this problem has been solved!

I could locate the guy in a Dutch Bitcoin forum where I made his behaviour public to all.

I got my 1M sats back and he got blocked from all Bitcoin forums in the Netherlands and Belgium…

9 Likes
8

Glad you got your sweet sats back, Deekee. Still countin’ with ya :czech_republic: , I am sad that Umbrel does not work for me, but I am syncing MyNode and once ready, I will be happy to open that promised channel with you :slightly_smiling_face: