Thanks to modern wallets and managed platforms, getting up and running can be low friction, secure and even enjoyable. But the moment you decide to take on the role of routing payments for others - hoping to earn satoshis from fees - the game changes completely. The Hidden Pitfalls of Running a Remote Lightning Node Running a remote Lightning node can be a powerful way to participate in the Bitcoin ecosystem.
In 2025, subnetworks are emerging that revive the impetus of channel factories with some new details that vastly increase their potential. They are natively interoperable with Lightning and achieve greater scale by allowing a group of participants to open a shared multisig UTXO and create multiple bilateral channels, which reduces the number of on-chain transactions and improves capital efficiency. Achieving greater scale by reducing complexity, Ark and Spark perform the same function as traditional channel factories with new designs and additional capabilities based on shared UTXOs.