It's up to you what fee to choose, but as I found out the hard way: if it doesn't confirm within 24 hours, the channel gets closed at a much higher fee. That's the part I can't control (I think the node decides), and fees for opening and closing channels are indeed the main worry I have for large scale LN adoption.
As long as the node keeps running, I don't really see a reason to close the channel.

If there was achange output, you can use CPFP on it.

I admit I don't know all the details of LN under the hood, but from what I understand you've send the funds to an address that both you and the node have some control over. I think your wallet gave the node a signed transaction which can be used to close the channel. So the node can decide to close the channel, thereby initiating another transfer (with a predefined lock time) to close the channel. When that happens because it's unconfirmed, the node does CPFP.
More of my experience with it here.

I don't think that's entirely correct. The "banks" problem is more when nodes become very big and LN becomes very centralized, but even then anyone can still create their own node.

99Bitcoins.com can explain it much better than I can:

Payment failed! "channel is currently disabled", RemoteFailure.
Does that mean your wallet is offline?
It worked 5 minutes later. Loan funded
Fee paid: 2 satoshi.

I'm not sure if you can choose the channel by yourself, but you'll need a payment request from me before you can pay (they're working on an update that allows payments without sending a request first).

Here it is:

I don't think there is such a thing as "using the same address twice", if you try to pay the same request again, it says it's already paid.
I'm not sure how much nodes can see from transactions that they don't process. I can imagine this is very good for mass adoption: no node will have to handle millions of transactions, all nodes will only handle the transactions that pass through that node.

2 sat

How do you get to that amount? Is that the amount "reserved" in the channel that you can't send? I've noticed the amount I can send sometimes goes up and down a bit.

Received
I'm still not entirely sure how payments are registered and how you can prove a request was paid. There are explorers like 1ML - Lightning Network Search and Analysis Engine, but I'm haven't searched for transactions yet. I kinda expect it only shows nodes.

I'm curious to see that too, and I really dislike that I can't set a custom fee.

I saw that too. But I couldn't find anywhere to paste it so I could verify (see fees, receipt or whatever).


I tried to close the channel prematurely (now) and I was warned that I would pay higher fees.
I believe that in the way lightning channels are designed channels should only be closed prematurely if there is a reason or a misunderstanding between the parts. I read something like this in mastering bitcoin but I am lazy now to check it

Just a small update.

I have closed all channels (2, one created by and the other probably created by loycev).  I received a few Satoshis from those channels, but in the end this test was expensive. I don't know exactly why because the  fees aren't very transparent.

I send 0.0011 BTC to eclair, and my final balance now is 0.000652
Open and closing channels are transactions... I sent to eclair with 3 sat/byte and create a channel with 13 sat/byte. Even with those relatively low w fees , this was quite expensive.

What was the fee for closing the channel? I assume that's the one that took a much larger share than when you opened it.

I think the fees have to be high, to prevent a double spend attack with an older state if it doesn't confirm fast enough. I hope it will at least become more transparant in the future.

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Miners?

I get "PAYMENT FAILED!" in Eclair: Route not found. Type: Local.

The fee was 5340 sat (Blockchain.com doesn't show the 8th digit for some reason). The remaining 4060 sat is change. That happened to me too when I opened the channel: despite trying to send the maximum amount, it created a change. I think this was because I adjusted the fee.
It would have been much better if Eclair would open a slightly bigger channel and have no change (which is almost dust).

It's more fun to play with the real stuff

I'm not doing it (and I'm not sure if it would be allowed on the Lending board), but feel free to create one.
Timelord2067's Trusted Testnet Thunder Timepayments?

If you want to test it out without touching your mainnet coins then install Eclair Mobile Testnet, grab some free testnet coins and buy yourself a coffee via the Lightning Network.