When I checked the news and opened 1ml.con myself, the capacity was actually below 4,000. It was at 3,999.53.
So yeah, I am not certain of future growth, extrapolating is going to zero, or it will cross 4,000 again (multiple times).
Treat the previous sentence as humor.

Yuck! Good luck with the recoveries!
As for LND, I have no idea; for Core Lightning did you use its backup plugin? If not, I'd prefer to prevent running the risk of losing one (or more) channel's full balance and rather ask counterparties to force close them (or wait until that happens). If you are 100% certain that the backup doesn't differ from the latest channel state, you can restore it safely and prevent any losses. But honestly at current mempool sizes, force closing channels isn't too expensive and it's the safer route, in my opinion.

Total capacity is something that will fluctuate naturally.  But the overall trend is clearly upwards.

Perhaps you could do with a little less confidence and a little more modesty, given how completely and utterly wrong you are half the time you say anything.  You act like a know-it-all but you're mostly just an obnoxious windbag with a petty grudge.  Current capacity is currently 4012 BTC, but there's nothing written in stone which says it'll never drop below 4000 again. 

Is there an IOS app that can use Lightening Network? I know of CashApp. Any others?

Update to my drama:

I was able to restore the database so I must have had the right hsm_secret ?  I guess I have to wait now for the node to finish syncing to see if we have the keys to anything...  Or maybe the node is just working?  That would be odd.

My understanding is the sqlite database backup would not restore with the wrong hsm_secret.

Anyway... the CL node might actually SURVIVE this torture.  Not 100% sure about the LND node.  At the same time I still feel like I have a long way to go.  All the TOR addresses look different now, and I have no idea what the node ID(s) is.  As long as I have the keys to force closed channels...

The HARDEST POT to watch boil:

I'm not 100% sure as I haven't yet had to restore a node myself, so I can't comment on that for sure but I'd tend to agree with your assessment.

What is this UI, by the way? I've never seen it myself so far.

Interesting! I have very limited experience with LND, but the theory of using the backup plugin and restoring a backup with is indeed pretty straight forward. I'm looking forward to seeing how it turns out in practice!
Did you set it up to save the backups on an external drive?

Like shown here?

I see! Yeah; that's odd. I wouldn't know what it tries to sync; Lightning startup from 0 is usually pretty fast anyway. Maybe it has to do with how many of your channel funding transactions are synced into the blockchain or something; but since you're at only around 50% of the blockchain download, it doesn't seem viable. I'm sure Raspiblitz have good docs about this.

Oooh I see, custom stuff. Alright. I'd always test such scripts before 'deployment', especially when it comes to something financially important such as Lightning backups. Or stick to existing tools.
But Raspiblitz backup sounds good; if it's within minutes of shutting down and you don't have a ton of activity in your channels, you could go for gold and restore those backups.
Does Raspiblitz backup everything by default? Or is it a plugin as well?

By the way; regarding channel activity, here a few impressions of fellow node operators from the forum. We have lots of days without any activity at all. So if you're anything like us, there's not going to be much to worry about.

This sounds like a very useful feature! For instance, letting the node start up (without broadcasting channel states or other functionalities); just for getting what the peer believes to be the latest channel state; then checking the backup and if they match, really start up (exchanging channel states and generally running the whole protocol again).

I'm not a big fan of SBC nodes due to their weak CPUs and my impatience when compiling software; but if I were to spin up another node on a SBC, I'd look into Raspiblitz with Core Lightning!

gotta love it.. the 'promise' of MICRO payments(microfees) under 100,000th of normal unit
becomes millipayments/milli fee's, under 1,000th of normal unit
and then centi-payments and centi fee's, under 100th of normal unit

seems you LN fangirls wanted to promise fee's of under 1 sat(complete route, meaning on average less than 0.05sat(to allow for a 20 hop route to still be under 1 sat)
where you have all been describing the mill and micro buzzwords ALOT suggesting 1000ths and 100th thousands of the times smaller. and all the promises of allow 'millions of payments.

check it out. do the math, run some scenario's
raths quote feb6th 148sat25 events = ~6sat for his hop in a route
darkvortex 207sat7 events = ~30sat for his hop in a route
raths quote feb 28th 647sat60 events = ~11sat for his hop in a route
raths quote april 66sat14 events = ~5sat for his hop in a route
darkvortex april 271sat13 events = ~21sat for his hop in a route
n0nce april 44/21 events = ~2sat for his hop..

now lets take the average
rath averages 30sat/hop
darkvortex averages 26sat/hop
n0nce is 2sat

and lets show a possible route
user->rath->darkvortex->n0nce->destination
          30sat   26sat          2sat

so if a user wanted to pay destination using the average fee of known hops on just a THREE HOP payment..
that user is having to pay 58sat

seems their promise of millisat payments and micropayments has gone and now its into centi-payments. where fee's are above 10% of a a regular bitcoin transaction

imagine if a user had to pay someone not 3 hops away. but 15 hops away..  yep suddenly its not so cheap as promised and just a LN is half the fee of bitcoin
especially if n0nce starts doing the same average fees as rath/darkvortex that amount will go up more if the new averages are more than a few sats each hop

yet simple maths of simple examples today suggest your faked promises were just that and you all already have switched from bait to trap

still laugh when i see more and more LN promises fail..

oh its been months now and although people show stats of their successes. they are too AFRAID to show the payment fails % at differing amounts..
shame on you for your utopian fantasies. but hey. its your network and if your the only ones using it, it can only bite yourselves in the ass in the end. enjoy that experience
....
p.s i have been a LN observer, so very much on topic. i know your desperately want to get me banned or posts deleted to hide the issues. but hey a observer and a moral user actually wants to know the bad aswell as the good, to get a risk assessment observation, they dont want to observe the dream hyped up utopian promise trying to sell them riches of profiting from fee's. they want to observe the reality that if they themselves wanted to spend their own money. how much it actually would cost on average..

Oh dear... who peed in your cornflakes?

I see lots of things wrong with your statements, and am not going to take the time to explain much of it as I doubt you would really be interested. 

As to failures routing payments...  I have not personally seen tons of that.  I do see them.  And more with personal nodes, or neutrino implementations.  Custodial lightning works basically perfectly.  And before you say "But that's not the right kind", I know... but what it does do is prove a well run node can not only manage payments well for a user, but for a whole country.  Therefore it is possible that node software, and light noncustodial wallets are going to improve over time, and be even more reliable.

As to fees... There is no real fee market yet.  People charge all different kinds of fees.  I will say that the VAST MAJORITY of my payments cost between 0-30 sats.  Only a handful ever go anywhere near 100, and only in special circumstances do I see them higher than that.  Particularly when opening a "turbo channel" or the like.

Anyway your point that lightning is far from perfect is true.  But I certainly do not see it as the failure you seem to... and I only see it getting better.