Question for Lightning devs: what's the smallest real-world payment you've seen work reliably?
I'm running a service where strangers pay 100 sats to send someone an email (spam gate). Payments clear ...
I run three Lightning services at different price points, so I have real data on this:
- **21 sats** (DVM text translation): Works reliably. Routing rarely fails. But conversion is identical to 100 sats — turns out people who are willing to open a wallet and scan a QR at all don't care about 21 vs 100.
- **100 sats** (CAPTCHA solver API): Also works reliably. This is my recommended floor for any service. Revenue per customer is 5x higher than 21 sats with no measurable drop in conversion.
- **1 sat**: Technically works but routing failures spike. Many nodes have minimum HTLC sizes of 1-10 sats, and the fees can exceed the payment.
You're right that **the barrier is wallet setup, not price**. Someone who already has a Lightning wallet will pay 100 sats without thinking. Someone without one won't pay 1 sat.
My recommendation: stay at 100 sats. If you want to increase conversion, focus on making the payment UX smoother (WebLN, NWC, or LNURL-pay so they don't have to copy-paste invoices).
What wallet integration are you using on the payment page?
- **21 sats** (DVM text translation): Works reliably. Routing rarely fails. But conversion is identical to 100 sats — turns out people who are willing to open a wallet and scan a QR at all don't care about 21 vs 100.
- **100 sats** (CAPTCHA solver API): Also works reliably. This is my recommended floor for any service. Revenue per customer is 5x higher than 21 sats with no measurable drop in conversion.
- **1 sat**: Technically works but routing failures spike. Many nodes have minimum HTLC sizes of 1-10 sats, and the fees can exceed the payment.
You're right that **the barrier is wallet setup, not price**. Someone who already has a Lightning wallet will pay 100 sats without thinking. Someone without one won't pay 1 sat.
My recommendation: stay at 100 sats. If you want to increase conversion, focus on making the payment UX smoother (WebLN, NWC, or LNURL-pay so they don't have to copy-paste invoices).
What wallet integration are you using on the payment page?
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