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Oh, I didn't pay enough attention to 'Pay to' and thought that you were trying to spend coins to more than 1 address so I recommended putting exclamation mark in the amount of one of those addresses and not the change address.


That's weird. It works fine with my wallet on Electrum 4.0.2. How did you fill out 'Pay to'? Since you knew about this feature, you probably did it right but just in case:

There is no need for such workarounds. Decide which address should get the remaining funds from the decreased fee and instead of the amount, use exclamation mark ('!'). This will force Electrum to send all the remaining coins to that address. There should be a much easier way in the 'Advanced preview' not to create a change address, though.

While both of these updates didn't wipe my device directly, they failed to install using both my computer and my laptop resulting in broken firmware which forced me to wipe my device and install the firmware again using my Android phone. In both cases, as stated by the error log on the device, something was interrupting the USB connection so it wasn't updates' fault. It might work fine for you, but the following idea may be better.


It is definitely not going to be wiped if you ignore that message, but you might not be able to sign the transaction. Why don't you use the previous version of Electrum (3.3.8) just to be safe? You don't have to uninstall the current one. Simply download the portable executable.

Keeping such a list up-to-date would be a pain. I have already linked a website which does it.



A few days ago, I wrote a short walkthrough of the Lightning Network support in the recent Electrum update. I will add it later to the first post. Did you mean a list of easy to use LN wallets or step-by-step guides for the most popular software?

Does "- a P2WPKH wallet is required; this type of wallet is now the default for standard wallets" or "- P2WPKH addresses are required; this kind of addresses are now the default for standard wallets" sound better? Either should be more understandable for most people.


SegWit has been the default wallet kind for some time now, but I wanted to mention it in case someone tried to send some coins to an old legacy wallet to test out the LN support. Transaction fees are relatively low right now, but they tend to change rapidly. It could help someone save some money on the fees and there is no harm in mentioning it.


Thanks, fixed.

This has been changed in the recent update. Apparently, the documentation hasn't been updated yet. Instead of 'Preview', click on 'Pay'. Your transaction won't be signed automatically, you will see more details of your transaction. It's a watch-only wallet anyway. If everything looks fine, press 'Finalize' in the bottom-left corner and you should be able to save the transaction.

Channels time out if the funding transaction is not confirmed within 24 hours so you can leave it be. I am not sure how a force-close would behave in this situation. Theoretically, it shouldn't have any impact on your wallet since you didn't sign the funding transaction.

What about the funding transaction? Has it been confirmed yet? As far as I remember, I got the same status when I accidentally closed Electrum before the transaction got confirmed. Electrum might have lost the connection to the node you are trying to open a channel with. In my case, the status changed to 'OPEN' after the transaction has been confirmed.


You should be fine without the force-close for now.

Yes, it works fine with my Nano X. Both beta versions had a problem where this warning was displayed. Apparently, it was fixed in the final release.

By they way, if you still haven't tested the Lightning Network support and don't know what to start with, visit a short walkthrough which I posted yesterday.

Table of contents

      1. Introduction
      2. Creating a payment channel
             a) Disabling Trampoline routing
      3. Sending a payment
      4. Receiving a payment
      5. Closing a channel
      6. Frequently Asked Questions


1. Introduction

You don't know what the Lightning Network is? Visit "Basics of The Lightning Network" and "The Lightning Network FAQ" first.

The Lightning Network support has been introduced in the recent Electrum update (4.0.1). Lightning Network support is experimental - neither I nor Electrum are responsible for any loss of funds. This guide has been updated for the 4.1.1 version. The walkthrough for versions prior to 4.1.0 can be found here.

Important things to note:

- a P2WPKH wallet is required; this type of wallet is now the default for standard wallets,
- Lightning funds cannot be restored from seed. You need to perform backups ('File -> Save backup'). You have to make a new backup every time you open a new channel. Backups will forcefully close channels,
- do not copy your wallet file! If you run an old copy of your wallet with active LN channels, some nodes might broadcast a penalty transaction if any of your channels' balance has changed,
- in a case of an uncooperative channel close, you have limited time to verify if the other node didn't cheat by broadcasting an old state of the channel (see #5),
- you cannot open a channel smaller than 0.002 BTC,
- Electrum creates private channels which do not route payments.


2. Creating a payment channel

Payment channels related options are available under 'Channels' tab which is hidden by default. You can enable it by going to 'View -> Show Channels'



In the 'Channels' tab there are two available options. 'Swap' allows to exchange on-chain coins for an LN incoming payment and vice-versa. 'Open Channel' allows you to create a new payment channel. Click on that option.



By default, Electrum does not download the network graph and delegates path estimation to special trampoline nodes to which only you can connect. If you want to open a channel to any Lightning node, see Disabling Trampoline routing.

As for now, there are three hard-coded trampoline nodes: ACINQ, Electrum and Hodlister which you can choose from the drop down list. The minimum funding value is 0.002 BTC.



Next, you have to select the funding transaction fee. If the transaction is not confirmed within 24 hours, the channel won't be created. It is another hard-coded value.



You might encounter these two errors when opening a channel, the former was mentioned above. The latter is other node's fault. Choose a different node if it happens.





Your payment channel will become active once your transaction reaches 3 confirmations.


a) Disabling Trampoline routing

At the top of the Electrum window, select "Tools -> Preferences".



Select "Lightning" tab and make sure that "Use trampoline routing (disable gossip)" is unticked. Close the window.



You should see a new icon in the bottom-right corner. The number indicates the progress of obtaining information about all publicly known nodes and channels. Having an up-to-date map of the network might help with finding the best route for your payments.



Now, you can open a channel to any Lightning Network node. If you are not sure which node you should choose, select 'Suggest'. If you want to decide on your own then use this Lightning Network explorer to find a suitable node.




3. Sending a payment

Invoiceless payments are not standardized yet, so you need to get an invoice from the person your are trying to send your coins to. Lightning Network payments are routed through other nodes if you are not directly connected to the recipient. Such payments might fail from time to time if there is no route available to the destination node or if the payments is too large. The latter problem has been addressed by splitting one large payment into multiple smaller ones, but this feature is not available in this release. Note that each node participating in the routing process might charge a small fee.

Go to the 'Send' tab and paste your invoice. 'Description' field will be automatically filled since this information is usually provided in the invoice. Note that you will not be able to send all of your coins. Each channel must maintain a reserve for its closure fees. You can see how much you can send from each channel by going to the 'Channels' tab, right-clicking on a channel and selecting 'Details...'. You cannot send from multiple channels at once.



Your transaction might be instant or it might take a few seconds. I have sent a transaction worth about $5.59 (0.00065301 BTC) and paid only a 1 satoshi fee. Your transaction will look like this in the 'History' tab:




4. Receiving a payment

Before you create an invoice, you need to learn how much you can receive. Your inbound capacity depends on if there is any remote balance on any of the channels. You can't receive payments without spending any coins. Switch to 'Channels' tab, right-click on a channel and select "Details...". You will see 'Can Receive' there. Note that an incoming payment will be sent via a single route to one of your channels so you shouldn't add up all of your channels' inbound capacity just like Electrum does in the 'Channels' tab.



To create an invoice, go to 'Receive', fill out 'Description' and 'Requested amount', optionally change when the invoice should expire and press 'Lightning'. Your invoice will be shown on the right side. Copy it and send it to the other person. Keep in mind that you can't receive payments over the Lightning Network if Electrum is turned off.




Closing a channel

Closing a channel is really simple. Go to the 'Channels' tab, right-click on the channel you want to close and select 'Close channel'. You should use 'Force-close channel' only if the other party is offline. In such a case, you will get your funds back after up to two weeks (2016 blocks). Most channels can be force-closed with a 144 block (~1 day) delay. In both cases, you won't be able to specify the closing transaction fee. Other implementations have such a feature.




5. Frequently Asked Questions

Can I make money off payment routing?

No, Electrum creates private channels which are not advertised across the network so they cannot be used for payment routing.

Can I open a channel if I use a hardware wallet?

Yes, you will need to connect your hardware wallet to sign the channel opening transaction. You won't need your hardware wallet to send Lightning payments.

Why does my payment fail? "Payment failed. No path found"

There are a couple of possible causes:

1) The receiver might not have enough incoming liquidity,
2) There is no path between the nodes both of you are connected to,
3) There is an available path, but the payment is too large to go through,

Is there any risk in using the Lightning Network?

The biggest risk is that the other person might attempt to steal your coins by broadcasting an old state of the channel when you are offline. This can be feasible for the other party if you sent some coins and received them back through the same channel at some point.

Electrum founds channels with a to_self_delay of 1024 blocks (~1 week), so this means that you can be safely offline for slightly less than a week. As for now, this value can be only changed directly in the code. If you are afraid of losing funds, you should set up a watchtower or use a different implementation and run your node 24/7.

Why do you assume that they need your location to 'generate the PIN'? You are supposed to come up with a PIN by yourself. The dialog box states that it needs those permissions to connect to the device.


There is no such a thing as GPS permission; there's only location permission. The way they phrased it could be simply a mistake on their end. Location uses not only GPS but also Wi-Fi, mobile networks and other sensors. You cannot turn them off individually (except for Wi-Fi) thus there is no point in differentiating location and GPS. My OnePlus phone allows me to see recent locations requests in the settings and I can't see BitPie there even though I have used it for a while. This means that their app accessed only information necessary to establish a BLE connection.



Trezor devices do not have a built-in Bluetooth so Trezor Manager app does not require the location permission. Which Ledger Nano are you referring to? The S or the X model?

Electrum is not a service. Even if all the servers go down, which is highly unlike to happen, the client can work offline. You will be able to export a Master Private Key or private keys for individual addresses. If Electrum website ever goes down for some reason then I am quite sure that other people will maintain mirrors of both installers and the source code.

You can't import your Electrum seed anywhere because it differs a bit from BIP 39 seeds (see this). You could get your Master Private Key and import it into a wallet which supports such a feature. If you want to have the same wallet in both Electrum and Wasabi then you should use Wasabi to generate a BIP 39 seed and import it into Electrum. You cannot convert your existing Electrum seed into a BIP 39 compatible one.

While the location permission needs to be granted, the Razor does not ask for the user's position via GPS. If any app is using GPS, an icon is shown in the notification bar. Also, you can turn off location in your phone's settings and you will still be able to connect to your Razor. The permission needs to be granted to access the information needed for the Bluetooth scan.


A VPN won't protect one from a GPS based location request.


No, it isn't. The Razor can only communicate via Bluetooth with the dedicated app available only for Android and iOS.

The uninstaller doesn't delete the data from the AppData. Press WIN + R, enter %appdata% and you should see 'Electrum' folder among some other folders.


It's much easier to back up 12 words than a long private key for a single address, isn't it? Especially, if one wants to keep the backup on some piece of paper or engrave it on some kind of metal.

That's because those devices do not use BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy). See this explanation. For example, Ledger Nano X uses BLE thus Ledger Live asks for location permission.


When you are asked to enter the PIN second time, the order of numbers changes. You have to enter exactly the same PIN. Don't worry about the different order of numbers on the device. In case you still don't get it, watch this video.

I might be wrong here, but I think that every Bluetooth device asks for the location access permission. As far as I remember, that's what my Galaxy Watch and Mi Band behaved like.


Apparently, I didn't have any problems with the setup because the Razor's software is based on Trezor One which I used for some time.


What about the Razor Wallet? You should have been looking at it since it was displaying numbers in a random order known only to the device. You can even see the instructions above "Please Enter New Pin". They are really small, though.

You're right, it doesn't have such feature. Still, the other part of my message is valid. If OP insists on signing messages using a native SegWit address then the other person will be forced to download the same wallet in order to be able to verify them.