Arthur Amendt on Nostr: Phoenix can be really confusing when you're first getting started. Especially if ...

Phoenix can be really confusing when you're first getting started. Especially if you're new to Lightning. I'll do my best to explain. Here's the metaphor they use to explain, which I find to be the most helpful thing to explain to beginners:

Imagine that your wallet is a bucket, and your balance is the water in the bucket.

Spending = pouring water out

Receiving = adding more water

When you're first getting started, you need to buy a bucket (which requires an on-chain operation with a mining fee).

After that, if the bucket needs to be resized to allow for more water, this requires an on-chain operation with a mining fee.

So what is happening here:

you sent some money to Phoenix via an on-chain (L1) tx

Phoenix needs to open a lightning channel with that money (via another L1 tx)

Phoenix can perform the L1 tx automatically, but it has safety guards in place to ensure the L1 fees aren't higher than you want/expect

These "safety guards" are configured in the "channel management" settings:

Max fee amount

Max fee percent

Remember, once you have a decent size bucket, you're pretty much done paying L1 fees forever. You can start to use exchanges and services which support lightning (Layer 2)