Can a Core Lightning channel carry a 50,000-sat payment?
A channel's funding amount combines both parties' balances. For a specific payment, start with the amount available in the direction you intend to use.
Compare the two directions
On the node making or receiving the payment, inspect its own channels. A 50,000-sat transfer requires 50,000,000 millisatoshis. The example keeps only normal channels and reports their connected state.
lightning-cli listpeerchannels | jq '.channels[] | select(.state == "CHANNELD_NORMAL") | {short_channel_id, peer_connected, spendable_msat, receivable_msat}'
Apply the directional limit
For an outgoing transfer, compare the amount including first-hop fees where applicable with spendable_msat. For an incoming transfer inspect receivable_msat. An offline partner or insufficient capacity later along the path can still prevent delivery. Summing several channels assumes a payment can actually be split across usable routes.