boltz-backend VS lightning-tools

This would only be possible custodial unless you run an own lighting node. Regarding the cashout to onchain cold wallet you can loop out lightning to onchain with literally any lightning wallet if you use a 3rd party service such as https://boltz.exchange/ or any other service that does the same job. Swapping to onchain can also be done using muun wallet but of course all methods cost the mining fee on top.

watch-only are on-chain wallets, so it will not accept lightning. unless you use muun wallet (custodial by third party) You can create a lightning wallet in bluewallet either by having your own node or adding it from a third party, getalby is a lightning wallet that you can add to bluewallet. After adding the wallet, lightning breez should accept the transaction, to send lightning to watch-only(on-chain) you would have to convert it or pass it to on-chain, https://boltz.exchange either https://learn.robosats.com/ they work quite well to move lightning to on-chain, keep in mind the fees can be high.

Also, look into swap services like https://boltz.exchange and https://fixedfloat.com

Today we’re introducing automation to LiquidOps, an intuitive interface to automate tasks for your nodes with workflows - it’ll restore liquidity in your channels with https://boltz.exchange/ submarine swaps and let you sleep at night!

I use https://boltz.exchange/ to loop out my LN BTC. Works great and it's the cheapest/easiest solution I've found.

I use Robosats exclusively these days and it's easy to send to cold storage using Boltz. Bonus points for boltz because I can increase the inbound liquidity of my Lightning node by sending sats to cold storage with them. You can do the same process they use manually but I've found that the fees are higher and it's less convenient that way

Swap out to a specific address using a service like https://boltz.exchange

I have also designed my own script that attempts to measure what I call "low fee routing diversity" and score and rank potential channel peers according to how they improve that metric: https://github.com/ajpwahqgbi/lightning-tools/tree/master/channel-analysis/node-recommender .

It's definitely possible to prevent other nodes from opening channels with your node. See my plugin here. Preventing connections might be possible; at least you could monitor listpeers and automatically disconnect them.

I wrote a collection of scripts (designed for C-Lightning) to analyze earnings. See in particular get_period_pnl.py: https://github.com/ajpwahqgbi/lightning-tools/tree/master/fee-analysis

Anyway long paths or high-degree polygons are increasingly less useful. I think it's more interesting to ask something like, "How connected are the most connected parts of the LN?". For that, I have done some analysis.

My node has excellent low-fee connectivity across the LN. PM me if you're interested in opening a channel to my node. Otherwise I recommend Wallet of Satoshi or their alternate node.

You might be interested in my node recommender script which does exactly that.

Once you have at least one channel you can try doing some graph analysis on the LN to find channel peers that improve your metrics. That has worked well for me.

I made this C-Lightning plugin to do exactly that. Warning: still needs testing :).

You watch your forwarding history logs, e.g. lightning-cli listforwards for C-Lightning. You can also automate the analysis and get nice pretty-printed reports of payment volume, fees earned, etc.