I have 6500 Sats stuck in a Force Closed Channel — the other channel was unresponsive so I had to force close. The force close status moved from Pending to Forced Close but I did not get the Sats back. See image attached. How do I get back the Sats?
Strange, maturity height is block height when you get back sats sitting in limbo. And this was before 4286 block as this number is negative. I see your channel has very low capacity, is closing transaction confirmed? My only idea is that commit fee on your side was too low at time of closing. Maybe someone will help you better. Never see negative blocks till maturity.
The closing transaction confirmed 1 month ago in mempool. This was when I did not know what I was doing I guess. The other channel was in-active so I Closed it. What does Limbo Balance mean and there must be a way to claim that Limbo balance.
Limbo balance are the funds you are missing. When force close, funds are returning to your wallet, but there is a timelock up to 2016 blocks. Exact number of blocks you have to wait is blocks till maturity. In you case this number of blocks passed few weeks ago and goes negative.
Found only this on reddit:
https://www.reddit.com/r/lightningnetwork/comments/mu5u3a/pending_force_close_seems_stuck_blocks_to/
If you run:
~/umbrel/bin/lncli pendingchannels
What’s the output?
umbrel@umbrel:~ $ ~/umbrel/bin/lncli pendingchannels
{
“total_limbo_balance”: “6345”,
“pending_open_channels”: [
],
“pending_closing_channels”: [
],
“pending_force_closing_channels”: [
{
“channel”: {
“remote_node_pub”: “0242a4ae0c5bef18048fbecf995094b74bfb0f7391418d71ed394784373f41e4f3”,
“channel_point”: “fa03cc5ddfb93c5cc6ed205b4028e3e765bb03ee0ea856a307aa944b477783a9:0”,
“capacity”: “20000”,
“local_balance”: “6345”,
“remote_balance”: “0”,
“local_chan_reserve_sat”: “0”,
“remote_chan_reserve_sat”: “0”,
“initiator”: “INITIATOR_LOCAL”,
“commitment_type”: “STATIC_REMOTE_KEY”
},
“closing_txid”: “4fccdfb7bbd499fb0b6fd73292bb5f5a4ea979cfa11658ade669c643e1418e8ec”,
“limbo_balance”: “6345”,
“maturity_height”: 678846,
“blocks_til_maturity”: -4455,
“recovered_balance”: “0”,
“pending_htlcs”: [
],
“anchor”: “LIMBO”
}
],
“waiting_close_channels”: [
]
}
Closing_tx can’t be found. It’s not confirmed and force close is still pending. Force close cost you more fees than balance in limbo, maybe purged from mempool when fees was high. Unfortunately here my knowledge ends. At least it was small amount. Learn from it and don’t open small channels. At least 200k sats, 500-1000k better.
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Ok. So interestingly. That Trx completed an hour ago. You are right — this was my super noob days when I created a small channel…and it was pending close for 4+ weeks. I did a Forced Close and forgot about it…turns out the 6345sats in Limbo on that channel returned to me as 749sats rest was the fees for the Trx. Phew! Now I understand the lovely Bitcoin technology better. This blockchain is robust.
Thanks for engaging @Vilas1979
I experienced a similar situation, in which a channel of 4,000,000 channels I opened to a peer got force closed but the Blocks Till Maturity was showing several minus numbers. I got help from one of the Lightning Labs slack members who suggested running the tool lncli pendingchannels command and in there you can really see the real-time on which you will receive the rest of the sats see example below:
"pending_htlcs": [
{
"incoming": false,
"amount": "99997",
"outpoint": "9b2a4b22f918d7a73269f8129fc87f8ce4bace9e4159bbcf582fdad1b1f65f13:0",
"maturity_height": 785002,
"blocks_til_maturity": 126,
"stage": 2
}
This information was not available any more on lightning apps such as Ride The Lightning (RTL).
After those blocks reached: 126 I received the rest of my sats.
What I am curious about now is if there is a way to accelerate that process or if there is a tool that can allow us to accelerate it.
I hope this helps,