The Lightning Network FAQ

[BlackHatCoiner]

Anyone else who wants to improve testnet's Lightning capacity with me? I'm willing to spare 1-5 tBTC for Lightning triangles, squares, pentagons, hexagons and the like. 
My Core Lightning node: https://1ml.com/testnet/node/032ce2dde49164118420ff73062e4d6c8a155df47251c24fc185e09337c241fd7d

Currently there are 8,7k public channels with about 640 BTC. I know we can do better than that. Lots of us here have tBTC in dust, and it'd be nice to improve testnet's routing; it's a mess if you've used it.

[darkv0rt3x]

Anyone else who wants to improve testnet's Lightning capacity with me? I'm willing to spare 1-5 tBTC for Lightning triangles, squares, pentagons, hexagons and the like. 
My Core Lightning node: https://1ml.com/testnet/node/032ce2dde49164118420ff73062e4d6c8a155df47251c24fc185e09337c241fd7d

Currently there are 8,7k public channels with about 640 BTC. I know we can do better than that. Lots of us here have tBTC in dust, and it'd be nice to improve testnet's routing; it's a mess if you've used it.

I would do it for sure but I'm in the middle of something I'm struggling to finish. Maybe if I can fix what I'm doing right now, I can go and create a node in the same device I run my normal node and run it in testnet. Gimme maybe a few days and maybe I can hop in in that testnet LN thing!

(I'm trying to create a vault of my own where I run an offline Bitcoin core instace just to create new addresses and keep them safe without ever having internet connection, and also a vault to save other important info, but I'm having some problems I still couldn't fix).

[BlackHatCoiner]

Sure, no hurries. Testnet can wait. 

[darkv0rt3x]

I have a question. Anyone here uses or ever used this Robosats app to purchase sats, over LN in a P2P kind of model exchange? This app seems to allow P2P purchases of sats over LN. Seems interesting this concept.
Also, I want to let people know about a cool app I've been using (actually, in my case, I'm waiting for a bug fix, but works well for most) to listen podcasts and earn sats as we listen, called Fountain app.

These seems to be what I think I can call L3 use cases for the LN. Good apps focused on LN and which allows us to learn and earn sats!

Edited;
I'm not sure, probably I shouldn't mix this subject in these thread! If needed, I delete the post!

[n0nce]

I'm not sure, probably I shouldn't mix this subject in these thread! If needed, I delete the post!

I don't think it's wrong; since we don't yet have a Lightning / L2 board, it's often easier to slightly touch on a subject in here instead of creating a new thread for that in the general Bitcoin Discussion board.

I have a question. Anyone here uses or ever used this Robosats app to purchase sats, over LN in a P2P kind of model exchange? This app seems to allow P2P purchases of sats over LN. Seems interesting this concept.

No, not yet; but I've heard about that application. I'll have a look. To me, Lightning can be used as a 'light' form of mixing, so it matches well with P2P on-/off-ramping, since your funds would kind of be 'auto-pre-mixed'.

Also, I want to let people know about a cool app I've been using (actually, in my case, I'm waiting for a bug fix, but works well for most) to listen podcasts and earn sats as we listen, called Fountain app.

Interesting! I did the opposite on Breez in the past, donating some sats by the minute for listening to a podcast.

Lately, I've missed a lot of the early enthusiasm that existed for 'pay per minute' type of ideas that sprung up when Lightning was in its infancy. There were ideas and even Testnet projects for paying for written articles not only individually, but even while scrolling down. Or for paying movies by the minute; we called that 'streaming sats', parallel to the content that was 'streamed' in the opposite direction.
I would much prefer an internet that is not filled with ads and trackers and where you rather pay the creators of the content you see directly; instead of indirectly through your personal data and huge advertising networks that take a large cut. Lightning was seen as the technology that can accomplish this, but a lot of this enthusiasm has sadly dropped off. But I'm totally digressing from your actual question...

These seems to be what I think I can call L3 use cases for the LN. Good apps focused on LN and which allows us to learn and earn sats!

No, these are L2 applications, just like a webshop that accepts on-chain payments is not a layer 2 application.
The third layer is when for instance, virtual channels are built on top of L2 channels or sidechains.


Edit: I've had a look at Robosats. It looks like it could come in handy especially for lower amounts, and it's indeed P2P and KYC-less. However, it's not non-custodial (there is a fully trusted escrow) and even though it's on Tor, it is also centralized. Not that those are total deal breakers, just want to make it clear here.
Actually, I don't know if it's even possible to build something that's at the same time:

• P2P
• trustless
• non-custodial / no trusted parties
• KYC-less

Even Bisq gives a non insignificant amount of power to the mediators, but at least in the 'normal mode of operation', you don't hand custody of your crypto funds over to an escrow, but rather put it in a multisig transaction. So in normal operation, where nobody tries to cheat, there is no interaction from anyone outside both trading partners. This is a little bit different here. You also can't shut down Bisq, since it's decentralized and runs on people's own machines, whereas Robosats runs on a central server that could be shut down at any time.
But again, the smaller, easier to route amounts, that are presented here (e.g. $50 gift cards as fiat payment) sound reasonable to transfer in such an escrow setting without too much worry.

[darkv0rt3x]

Lately, I've missed a lot of the early enthusiasm that existed for 'pay per minute' type of ideas that sprung up when Lightning was in its infancy. There were ideas and even Testnet projects for paying for written articles not only individually, but even while scrolling down. Or for paying movies by the minute; we called that 'streaming sats', parallel to the content that was 'streamed' in the opposite direction.
I would much prefer an internet that is not filled with ads and trackers and where you rather pay the creators of the content you see directly; instead of indirectly through your personal data and huge advertising networks that take a large cut. Lightning was seen as the technology that can accomplish this, but a lot of this enthusiasm has sadly dropped off. But I'm totally digressing from your actual question...

Yeah, I have the same vision about the way internet was driven to make money. I mean, using our personal data through "guided marketing" (not sure the correct name is this, but you get the point, I hope), tracking and forcing us to accept countless javascript shit that if you don't accept, sites simply won't load or function properly. I even consider this pretty much a direct attack to us and really offensive when you visit a site and you have the choice to "Accept All", but very rarely you are given the option to "Reject All", mainly in the 3rd party legitimate interests, or whatever that is called, that if you click there to deactivate one by one, you have like 2000 companies. It's ridiculous!

I think it was Alex Bosworth that owns that yellow site I can't remember the name, with quite some "pay-per-view" content. It was cool at the beginning but I stop using it because you can get pretty much the same information for free. I know we could use that site to encourage LN usage and content creation and etc, but this end ups eating a lot of our small amount of sats we work hard to stack! :p

No, these are L2 applications, just like a webshop that accepts on-chain payments is not a layer 2 application.
The third layer is when for instance, virtual channels are built on top of L2 channels or sidechains.

Oh ok, I see. I had the idea that apps being built on top of LN were considered L3, but it makes sense what you say!

Edit: I've had a look at Robosats. It looks like it could come in handy especially for lower amounts, and it's indeed P2P and KYC-less. However, it's not non-custodial (there is a fully trusted escrow) and even though it's on Tor, it is also centralized. Not that those are total deal breakers, just want to make it clear here.
Actually, I don't know if it's even possible to build something that's at the same time:

    P2P
    trustless
    non-custodial / no trusted parties
    KYC-less


Even Bisq gives a non insignificant amount of power to the mediators, but at least in the 'normal mode of operation', you don't hand custody of your crypto funds over to an escrow, but rather put it in a multisig transaction. So in normal operation, where nobody tries to cheat, there is no interaction from anyone outside both trading partners. This is a little bit different here. You also can't shut down Bisq, since it's decentralized and runs on people's own machines, whereas Robosats runs on a central server that could be shut down at any time.
But again, the smaller, easier to route amounts, that are presented here (e.g. $50 gift cards as fiat payment) sound reasonable to transfer in such an escrow setting without too much worry.

Good points. You just did the research I was also doing about it but faster. I was busy trying to fix the problem I mentioned in my previous post, so, doing some research on Robosats was kinda next in the list!
Thanks for pointing that out!

[darkv0rt3x]

For whoever is using Core Lightning, it was updated a few ours ago to v0.11.2. Minor release but with important fixes

https://github.com/ElementsProject/lightning/releases/tag/v0.11.2

This is a minor release, highly recommended, which fixes several problems with the v0.11 (and v0.11.1) releases:

    Unwanted unilateral closes with LND. v0.11 removed logic to downgrade errors, and this reintroduces it when LND sends "internal error" as the reason for an error (which it seems to do often, but recovers).
    Two more occasional crashes fixed with reconnection logic.
    connectd large memory usage and large CPU usage reduced significantly.
    "Could not load channels from the database" failure on startup fixed, when we had old TORv2 addresses in the database.
    Two fixes to pay/routefinding code, for better payment success.

Thanks to all the people who reported bugs!
Rusty.

[Rath_]

For whoever is using Core Lightning, it was updated a few ours ago to v0.11.2. Minor release but with important fixes

LND also got a new update (v.0.15.0) a couple of days ago. The most notable changes are: on-chain wallet Taproot support and some database optimizations (database bloat has been a huge problem for LND node operators).

https://github.com/lightningnetwork/lnd/releases/tag/v0.15.0-beta

[cygan]

since today there is also a new update of the zeus lightning wallet - one of my favorite wallets when it comes to ln payments
the update contains among others the following changes: send to bech32m (taproot) addresses, receive to p2tr (taproot) addresses (lnd v0.15+ only)


https://github.com/ZeusLN/zeus/releases/tag/v0.6.5

[dkbit98]

There is one more centralized exchange adding support for Lightning Network, that is Bitflyer from Japan, but they are also working in other countries around the world.
I never used this exchange and I think they have mandatory kyc verification (someone correct me if I am wrong) but this is good news for growing LN.
I can't find any information about their node and it's status, but there are some information on their websites:
https://bitflyer.com/en-us/FAQ/lightning_us
https://bitflyer.com/en-us/s/glossary/lightning-network
https://lightning.bitflyer.com/docs?lang=en

[BlackHatCoiner]

Does any RTL user see a "Circular Rebalance" option in channels' actions? I want to re-balance my channels, without installing addons scripts like the eye of satoshi or Thunderhub. I've seen it's possible with RTL in some version, but not in mine (v0.12.3).

By the way, is there a tool/script which takes your node's ID and according to Lightning's topology, it helps you open up channels effectively?


Stating it here too.

Code:

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA256

Node URI: 03cd32110547654132187f08e217b20e3ce69f49dff5119da5597a5c0f8a2c7a5e@xixzo67fevmab7wytj5qp7mowvbildpbr7xgaj4hp5dbqgr36termcyd.onion:9735
Implementation: Core Lightning v0.10.2
Description: The node is running on a raspberry pi 4 and can only be accessed via Tor. Contact me if you want to open a balanced channel. 
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----

iHUEARYIAB0WIQQ/EGoOS9yEdGAr7qWxkWQUqwax1AUCYsLgoAAKCRCxkWQUqwax
1KS+AP0cDOB0AqWvx02P9yvtd0vZNlD+BL2V9/WEfLJwE38U/wEA3LbM9O+FmKMC
hFSvPiJyCbI7gq1rttb9ga9KZ1I7jQw=
=TA4Z
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

[psycodad]

<snip>

By the way, is there a tool/script which takes your node's ID and according to Lightning's topology, it helps you open up channels effectively?

<snip>

I used this one a few times, it is not perfect as capacities are not considered but it helps to find a node which gives you maximum connectivity/hop reduction:

https://moneni.com/mcb/nodematch

HTH

[Rath_]

Does any RTL user see a "Circular Rebalance" option in channels' actions? I want to re-balance my channels, without installing addons scripts like the eye of satoshi or Thunderhub

I believe that "Circular rebalance" and "Loop out" are LND exclusive features in RTL. You need to install the rebalance plugin and use a command line.

[darkv0rt3x]

Does any RTL user see a "Circular Rebalance" option in channels' actions? I want to re-balance my channels, without installing addons scripts like the eye of satoshi or Thunderhub

I believe that "Circular rebalance" and "Loop out" are LND exclusive features in RTL. You need to install the rebalance plugin and use a command line.

Indeed, RTL is way more focused for LND as they still have more users than Core Lightning. Many options are specific to LND, unfortunately. I just hope that the user number increases for Core Lightning as fast as possible because they are catching up in terms of what they offer and what LND offers and that soon RTL can offer more options for Core Lightning users!

From the command line, there are these commands to use for rebalancing:

rebalance outgoing_scid incoming_scid [msatoshi] [retry_for] [maxfeepercent] [exemptfee] [getroute_method]
    Rebalancing channel liquidity with circular payments. This tool helps to move some msatoshis between your channels.

rebalanceall [min_amount] [feeratio]
    Rebalance all unbalanced channels if possible for a very low fee. Default minimum rebalancable amount is 50000sat. Default feeratio = 0.5, half of our node's default fee. To be economical, it tries to fix the liquidity cheaper than it can be ruined by transaction forwards. It may run for a long time (hours) in the background, but can be stopped with the rebalancestop method.

rebalancereport
    Show information about rebalance    

rebalancestop
    It stops the ongoing rebalanceall.

Edited;

Some fresh insider news. Heheh

[n0nce]

Does any RTL user see a "Circular Rebalance" option in channels' actions? I want to re-balance my channels, without installing addons scripts like the eye of satoshi or Thunderhub

I believe that "Circular rebalance" and "Loop out" are LND exclusive features in RTL. You need to install the rebalance plugin and use a command line.

Can confirm: rebalance plugin works like a charm. You can both specify manually which channel's balance to reduce and which channel's balance to increase and by how much, as well as using the automatic 'rebalanceall' option. Although I haven't had nearly as much success with that as with the manual way.

[fillippone]

Does any RTL user see a "Circular Rebalance" option in channels' actions? I want to re-balance my channels, without installing addons scripts like the eye of satoshi or Thunderhub

I believe that "Circular rebalance" and "Loop out" are LND exclusive features in RTL. You need to install the rebalance plugin and use a command line.

Can confirm: rebalance plugin works like a charm. You can both specify manually which channel's balance to reduce and which channel's balance to increase and by how much, as well as using the automatic 'rebalanceall' option. Although I haven't had nearly as much success with that as with the manual way.

Sorry, you are saying the plug-in works, but doing that manually is still the best options as far as results are concerned?

[darkv0rt3x]

Does any RTL user see a "Circular Rebalance" option in channels' actions? I want to re-balance my channels, without installing addons scripts like the eye of satoshi or Thunderhub

I believe that "Circular rebalance" and "Loop out" are LND exclusive features in RTL. You need to install the rebalance plugin and use a command line.

Can confirm: rebalance plugin works like a charm. You can both specify manually which channel's balance to reduce and which channel's balance to increase and by how much, as well as using the automatic 'rebalanceall' option. Although I haven't had nearly as much success with that as with the manual way.

Sorry, you are saying the plug-in works, but doing that manually is still the best options as far as results are concerned?

For Core Lightning users using RTL, manually is still the only way. So, you have to get your hands dirty in the command line for now. Which can only be good, as your learning will be better, in my opinion.

[n0nce]

Sorry, you are saying the plug-in works, but doing that manually is still the best options as far as results are concerned?

I believe I never had any success with the automatic method, but also no error messages either.

For Core Lightning users using RTL, manually is still the only way. So, you have to get your hands dirty in the command line for now. Which can only be good, as your learning will be better, in my opinion.

Oh really? Is it documented that lightning-cli rebalanceall simply doesn't work with Core Lightning backend? I had no idea about this.. Just started it from time to time in hope it'd do something.
It does also give you an error message if you quickly invoke it again, which makes it seem like it's doing something.

Code:

bitcoin@localhost:~> lightning-cli rebalanceall
{
   "message": "Rebalance started with min rebalancable amount: 50000000msat, feeratio: 0.5"
}
bitcoin@localhost:~> lightning-cli rebalanceall
{
   "message": "Rebalance is already running, this may take a while. To stop it use the cli method 'rebalancestop'."
}

[Rath_]

Oh really? Is it documented that lightning-cli rebalanceall simply doesn't work with Core Lightning backend? I had no idea about this.. Just started it from time to time in hope it'd do something.

BlackHatCoiner was referring to RTL's "Circular rebalance"; not the rebalanceall command. Still, I have used it a couple of times and it generated a few invoices, but all of them failed to be paid.

[n0nce]

Oh really? Is it documented that lightning-cli rebalanceall simply doesn't work with Core Lightning backend? I had no idea about this.. Just started it from time to time in hope it'd do something.

BlackHatCoiner was referring to RTL's "Circular rebalance"; not the rebalanceall command. Still, I have used it a couple of times and it generated a few invoices, but all of them failed to be paid.

All right; I see. But rebalanceall is essentially the same thing, only without GUI, right?
Where did you find those invoices? In lightning-cli listinvoices?