Channel Liquidity Marketplaces Are Quietly Making Lightning Boring

Payment routing success rates for transfers above a few hundred dollars have improved markedly over the past year, and the cause is unglamorous: a functioning market in inbound channel capacity.

Node operators can now lease inbound liquidity at a quoted rate for a fixed term rather than negotiating channels by hand. The result is that capital flows toward the routes that actually carry payments, which is what the network's early designers assumed would happen and what for years did not.

The centralisation question

Efficient markets concentrate. A small number of well-capitalised routing nodes handle a disproportionate share of volume, and researchers note that payment privacy degrades as the number of plausible intermediaries falls.

Operators counter that the alternative — a sparse graph where large payments simply fail — protects nobody. The measurable question is whether concentration keeps rising once the easy capital efficiency gains are exhausted.