Lightning Payment Infrastructure evaluated across custody of funds in flight, liquidity supply and published cost per payment, published availability and in-flight behaviour, and the exit: keys, channels and migration off the host.
Olympus by ZEUS
#1 of 13 · published ranking
Olympus by ZEUS
81ChainChoice Score
4199
Why it leads
4 points ahead of Alby Hub on measured data (8.3 vs 6.9 points), not on any published criterion
Cost
Not priced· No comparable price is published
No provider can pay for a position in this table. The code that computes this order cannot read which links earn us a commission, and every build proves it. Every score below rebuilds from the published criteria.Ranking 2026.08 · 4 criteria · 13 products · same inputs, same order
Ranked on 4 published criteria weighted 26/24/28/22, which set goal alignment — 30 of the 86 points. The rest: regional access 20, evidence depth 18, ease of use 10, institutional trust 8. Profile match is shown in breakdowns but carries no weight.
Audit
Infrastructure
Methodology
2026.09.15
published 2026-09-16
Providers tracked
980+
across 119 categories
Last verified
2026-09-05
newest dated pricing or sentiment read
Named on the roster
2 people
managing directors · 6 automated processes
Decision guide
What matters most before choosing in this category
Weighted on published availability and in-flight behaviour (28), custody of funds in flight (26), liquidity supply and published cost per payment (24), and the exit — keys, channels and migration off the host (22). Availability leads because a rail that stops is a business that stops, and a measured per-component record is a different claim from a headline SLA. The heaviest disagreement in the pool is not about quality: the vendors that let you hold the keys tend to price by conversation, and the vendors that publish a rate card tend to hold the funds.
What matters most before choosing in this category
Weighted on published availability and in-flight behaviour (28), custody of funds in flight (26), liquidity supply and published cost per payment (24), and the exit — keys, channels and migration off the host (22). Availability leads because a rail that stops is a business that stops, and a measured per-component record is a different claim from a headline SLA. The heaviest disagreement in the pool is not about quality: the vendors that let you hold the keys tend to price by conversation, and the vendors that publish a rate card tend to hold the funds.
Who holds the money between your payer sending and your balance settling?
Can you model the cost of a payment, and of the capacity to receive one, before you sign?
If you had to move off this rail next quarter, what would you be able to take with you?
Current editor lead
Expert review and scoring weights
Olympus by ZEUS
Olympus by ZEUSData checked Sep 2026
An LSP that prices liquidity to the satoshi, quotes the fee through its API before the wrapped invoice issues and posts 21 measured components - but leaves service levels to a private Service Agreement, and caps one user at 10,000,000 sats.
An LSP that prices liquidity to the satoshi, quotes the fee through its API before the wrapped invoice issues and posts 21 measured components - but leaves service levels to a private Service Agreement, and caps one user at 10,000,000 sats. Strongest on liquidity supply and published cost per payment (10/10): Bands 2-3, both sides priced on docs.zeusln.app/lsp/fees: 'New Channel Open (up to 1m sats) 10,000 sats', 'New Channel Open (1m - 5m sats) 1%', 'Wrapped invoices without channel opens 2 sats'. Band 4, two limbs. Weakest on published availability and in-flight behaviour (6/10): Bands 2-3: status.zeusln.com, rendered 2026-09-04, shows 21 named components under the heading 'Uptime Last 90 days', each with its own rolling percentage and an 'Operational' or 'Down' label - 'Flow Mainnet' at '96.597%', 'LSPS1 Mainnet' at '94.305%', 'LNURL ZEUS Pay' at '99.938%', 'BTCD1' at '99.999%' - beneath a… Published price: Event Fee New Channel Open (up to 1m sats) 10,000 sats New Channel Open (1m - 5m sats) 1% Wrapped invoices without channel opens 2 sats
Best forLiquidity and published cost — 10/10
Main tradeoffTwo limits to size before building. A hard ceiling: 'At present, users can only have a max total capacity of 10,000,000 sats across all their channels with the Olympus by ZEUS LSP node' (docs.zeusln.app/lsp/channel-differences) - 0.1 BTC per end user, whatever the volume. And the marketing figure is not the measured one: zeusln.com/route shows '99.9%+' as a node-uptime stat, while on 2026-09-04 the status.zeusln.com monitor feed puts the two endpoints an integration calls at '96.597%' (Flow Mainnet) and '94.305%' (LSPS1 Mainnet) over 90 days, and LSPS1 Mainnet at '83.056%' over 30.
Verify before signupEvent Fee New Channel Open (up to 1m sats) 10,000 sats New Channel Open (1m - 5m sats) 1% Wrapped invoices without channel opens 2 sats
Methodology
How this category is reviewed
Reviewed on custody of funds in flight, liquidity supply and published cost per payment, published availability and in-flight behaviour, and the exit: keys, channels and migration off the host.
The order on this page is the published ranking for this category. Every criterion, weight and source behind it is on the methodology page.
Frequently asked
Questions people ask before choosing lightning infra
What is the best Lightning payment infrastructure?
It depends which of two answers you want, and the pool splits on it. The vendors that let you hold the keys and the node tend to price by conversation; the vendors that publish a rate card to the basis point tend to hold the funds. Olympus by ZEUS and Alby Hub tie at the top from opposite ends of that split, which is why this category publishes its tie-break rules.
Is a published uptime number the same as a good one?
No, and the difference is the point. An SLA is a promise about the future; a status page with ninety days of per-component history is a record of the past, and only one of the two can be checked. Some vendors here advertise a headline percentage with nothing behind it while others publish measured per-component uptime that is lower than the headline others advertise.
How much does the exit matter if the vendor is fine today?
Voltage is the reason it is weighted at all. It shut its self-serve node product on 31 August 2026 and published an ordered runbook that states plainly it will not support node migration. A buyer who had read the exit terms before integrating had a different year from one who had not.
Not financial advice · For informational purposes only · Always do your own research
//Analytics consent·GDPR · ePrivacy · TTDSG
ChainChoice measures page views and conversions with two cookieless, EU-hosted services: Plausible and Cloudflare Web Analytics. Nothing loads until you accept, and rankings are identical either way.ChainChoice measures how the engine is used — page views, conversions, referrer — through two cookieless, EU-hosted services: Plausible and Cloudflare Web Analytics. No advertising cookies, no cross-site profile, no data resale. Neither script loads until you accept, and rankings are identical whether you accept or decline.
