An outage is not a choice
2 November 2026
The Lightning page asks five independent operators for a price every time it loads. For a while it printed all five answers in the list somebody uses to choose one:
SATS Routing BEST 1,987,707 sats 0.6% + 293 Boltz — does not resolve Coinos — takes 25,000 to 600,000 sats ZEUS Swaps — HTTP 502 Middle Way — HTTP 403Four of the five rows are not prices, and three of them are not choices either. No amount, no address and no second attempt turns HTTP 502 into an option. Three quarters of a comparison that could not be compared.
The one refusal that stays
Coinos is different and the difference is the whole point. “Takes 25,000 to 600,000 sats” is a fact about the number in the box above it. Change the number and the answer changes — so it belongs in front of somebody who is choosing, and the others do not.
That is the test, and it generalises: does this row tell the reader anything they can act on? A price can be taken. A range can be met. A node that is down can only be waited out, and waiting is not something a list of prices should be asking for.
Where the distinction had to be made
Both kinds arrived in one list, distinguishable only by reading the sentence. Matching strings in the component would have worked until somebody reworded a message, so the comparison itself now says which kind each refusal is — out of range, or unreachable — and the two surfaces that show them disagree on purpose rather than by accident.
It is also measurable now. An operator that refuses a size is up and saying so; counting that as downtime would libel it. The record published under that board keeps the two in separate columns for exactly this reason.
What is not hidden
The outages are still published, on the board further down the same page, named and quoted. A site that hid them would be claiming the network is healthier than it is. They are evidence about operators; the widget above is a control for choosing one. Different questions, different places.
Every figure above can be checked against the providers yourself — no account, no sign-up, and nothing is held for you at any point.