Messing up at Robosats

Hi Everyone,

I tried out Bisq and it was quite successful. I made some buys, made some sells and it seems like things work for the most part. It has some bugs but nothing that does not eventually get resolved.

I had trouble figuring out Robosats. I'm letting you know my mistakes so that you don't make them. It was probably because:

1. I don't know how to use the lightning network so well.
2. I tried using electrum with their trampolines.

Here's how it went:

1. I got Tor and figured out how to run it.
2. I went to the Robosats website and found the Tor link.
3. I went to the Robosats site and I actually properly saved my bot.
4. I set up a small electrum trampoline channel for something small like 0.002 BTC.
5. I found a deal that I thought was reasonable and clicked on it.
6. I sent them my security deposit through a lightning invoice. Now I have three hours.
7. I then tried to set up a few different half sized BTC channels that would not make the whole payment. I didn't know that this was a problem.
8. I then learned through experience that the only way to pay the full invoice was to use a full sized channel that would cover the whole payment.
9. I made a new larger channel that would easily cover the whole payment.
10. I clicked pay for this lightning invoice three times and it failed three times. Each of those times the trampoline tried to send eight times.
11. I lost my security deposit.
12. I'm in the process of closing my lightning channels.

Possible analysis:

1. Electrum is not that good for lightning.
2. Trampolines are not that good for transactions above 0.01 BTC.
3. I needed a way to practice these things and could not find one.

Any thoughts on what else we can learn?

EDITS:

1. Maybe we can also learn that the documentation for Robosats isn't so great.