Should I open multiple channels with the same counterparty?

There are some things you should consider before opening another channel with the same counterparty.

You might have encountered the situation where you need more receiving capacity or want to increase your spending balance, and you plan to open a new channel as you did before.

However there are some things to consider.

1. Opening new channels is expensive. Can you use you re-balance your channels instead?

2. You increase your dependence on a single counterparty. Can you open a channel with a different counterparty instead?

Rebalancing 🧑‍🔧

You can use https://boltz.exchange/ to swap funds in or out of your channels. This way you do not need to pay for LSP fees or multiple onchain transactions.

In Alby Hub 1.14.0 you will be able to create swaps from your "Node" page inside Alby Hub.

Choose Another Counterparty 🤓

Note: by default Alby Hub will try to pick a new counterparty for you. The below applies if you open the "Advanced" options, open a channel with on-chain funds, or already have one channel with all Alby Hub LSP partners.

You can check which counterparty nodes you have channels with on your "Node" page. Then, when opening a new channel, you can select another counterparty when you choose the "Advanced" option.

Thanks. We appreciate that you went through the first steps yourself. 💛