Electrum Lightning Network walkthrough

[Rath_]

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.

[1715474979]

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[arorts]

Great guide!!

What's the best resolution if stuck with "Reestablishing" channel status for hours and no visible option for a cooperative close?
I already hit the "Freeze (for sending)" option.

Should I just go ahead and force close the channel before taking my computer offline?

[Rath_]

What's the best resolution if stuck with "Reestablishing" channel status for hours and no visible option for a cooperative close?

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.

Should I just go ahead and force close the channel before taking my computer offline?

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

[arorts]

Thanks. I just discovered I didn't get to sign/broadcast the transaction (but I'm not interested anymore in proceeding with it either).

Is it better to let it expire by itself or force close? Not sure how long it'd take if left alone.

[Rath_]

Is it better to let it expire by itself or force close? Not sure how long it'd take if left alone.

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.

[ysangkok]

He claims that not all bc1 wallets will work with the Lightning Network.
Only P2WPKH wallets will work, i.e. multi-sig.
2FA and other P2WSHs will not work.

Using P2WPKH does not imply you are using multi-sig, your 'i.e.' is wrong.

Funds spent to bc1 addresses can either be P2WPKH or P2WSH. The length would determine which of these it is.

I think Electrum will not allow you to enable Lightning if you have the wrong wallet type. So I don't know if it really make sense to warn about this up-front, users will find out.

[arorts]

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.

At the moment, the channel status remains unchanged as "reestablishing" so I tried to force close (it warned me it'd take up to 600 blocks to get funds back) but it ultimately failed as it threw this error:

https://imgur.com/a/1HghOwk

It seems as if unsigned Txs have a longer time lock than signed Txs so I guess I shouldn't have to wait longer than 600 blocks to report back my findings.

[zx9r_]

Nice tutorial.

Just a typo: When you say "To create an invoice, go to 'Send', fill out 'Description' and 'Requested amount', optionally change when the invoice should expire and press 'Lightning'."

just replace "go to 'Send'" with "go to 'Receive'"

[pooya87]

a native SegWit wallet is required (your addresses should start with bc1)

He claims that not all bc1 wallets will work with the Lightning Network.
Only P2WPKH wallets will work, i.e. multi-sig.
2FA and other P2WSHs will not work.

for reference: https://github.com/spesmilo/electrum/blob/01a2d127878642c8bcb123e5e7f3de744aeb071c/electrum/wallet.py#L314-L316

by the way P2WPKH is a simple single signature script similar to P2PKH (addresses starting with 1) and has nothing to do with multi-sig. similarly P2WSH is simply a pay to "script hash" scripts which can be multi-sig or any other script.

[igor72]

He claims that not all bc1 wallets will work with the Lightning Network.
Only P2WPKH wallets will work, i.e. multi-sig.
2FA and other P2WSHs will not work.

You made a little typo here, but it changed what I said  .

Here's the corrected text:

He claims that not all bc1 wallets will work with the Lightning Network.
Only P2WPKH wallets will work. It means that bc1 multi-sig, 2FA and other P2WSHs will not work.

[Rath_]

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.

So I don't know if it really make sense to warn about this up-front, users will find out.

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.

just replace "go to 'Send'" with "go to 'Receive'"

Thanks, fixed.

[nc50lc]

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.

The former sounds right, the latter suggests that a wallet with imported P2WPKH addresses can be used for LN.

Tried it and the "enable" button is disabled for imported wallet with a single native SegWit address.
But it might change in the future because of this message when I clicked help:

Lightning is currently restricted to HD wallets with p2wpkh addresses.

[wchancao]

Hello, i have enable Lightning on Electrum following your steps, channel is Open, but i cant send using Lightning, i have tried sending to 3 different wallets (BLW, Phoenix and Wallet of  Satoshi) and all 3 give me the "Payment Failed. No path found" error. What could it be? How can I solve this issue?

[Chikito]

Hello, i have enable Lightning on Electrum following your steps, channel is Open, but i cant send using Lightning, i have tried sending to 3 different wallets (BLW, Phoenix and Wallet of  Satoshi) and all 3 give me the "Payment Failed. No path found" error. What could it be? How can I solve this issue?

Maybe you have change amount/base unit btc into sat at preference.

 

[Rath_]

i have tried sending to 3 different wallets (BLW, Phoenix and Wallet of  Satoshi) and all 3 give me the "Payment Failed. No path found" error. What could it be? How can I solve this issue?

Either the node with which you opened a channel is badly connected or there aren't any nodes with enough liquidity to route your payment. You might have made a mistake from the post above. If you didn't specify the node manually when opening the channel then Electrum should have suggested a well-connected node. I am not sure about BlueWallet and Wallet of Satoshi since they are custodial wallets, but channels created using the Phoenix wallet definitely do not have any inbound capacity by default. You will have to spend some of your coins before attempting to receive to it. That's also the case for Eclair Mobile.

[wchancao]

i have tried sending to 3 different wallets (BLW, Phoenix and Wallet of  Satoshi) and all 3 give me the "Payment Failed. No path found" error. What could it be? How can I solve this issue?

Either the node with which you opened a channel is badly connected or there aren't any nodes with enough liquidity to route your payment. You might have made a mistake from the post above. If you didn't specify the node manually when opening the channel then Electrum should have suggested a well-connected node. I am not sure about BlueWallet and Wallet of Satoshi since they are custodial wallets, but channels created using the Phoenix wallet definitely do not have any inbound capacity by default. You will have to spend some of your coins before attempting to receive to it. That's also the case for Eclair Mobile.

Yes, I used a suggested node from Electrum, so im asumming that node has enough liquidity... I think i din not make  a mistake following the post above, i read twice before starting, and followed it when i was doing it Electrum... One of the channels I already had in Phoenix has enough inbound capacity...

[wchancao]

Hello, i have enable Lightning on Electrum following your steps, channel is Open, but i cant send using Lightning, i have tried sending to 3 different wallets (BLW, Phoenix and Wallet of  Satoshi) and all 3 give me the "Payment Failed. No path found" error. What could it be? How can I solve this issue?

Maybe you have change amount/base unit btc into sat at preference.

https://i.imgur.com/pJDNyW7.png  https://i.imgur.com/CVGK54j.png

I'll switch to sats and let you know if it was that silly detail... 

[nc50lc]

-snip-

Yes, I used a suggested node from Electrum, so im asumming that node has enough liquidity... I think i din not make  a mistake following the post above, i read twice before starting, and followed it when i was doing it Electrum... One of the channels I already had in Phoenix has enough inbound capacity...

I'm getting a different error when the receiver's inbound capacity isn't enough, so it can't be the other party's inbound capacity:


I second BitCryptex's first guess, "Payment Failed. No path found" is most likely an issue with your channel's remote node's liquidity.
And I've been getting that error in testnet before when I have only one channel, probably because not all of the suggested nodes are reliable.

[wchancao]

-snip-

Yes, I used a suggested node from Electrum, so im asumming that node has enough liquidity... I think i din not make  a mistake following the post above, i read twice before starting, and followed it when i was doing it Electrum... One of the channels I already had in Phoenix has enough inbound capacity...

I'm getting a different error when the receiver's inbound capacity isn't enough, so it can't be the other party's inbound capacity:
https://i.imgur.com/rJNQZAR.png

I second BitCryptex's first guess, "Payment Failed. No path found" is most likely an issue with your channel's remote node's liquidity.
And I've been getting that error in testnet before when I have only one channel, probably because not all of the suggested nodes are reliable.

Yes, im thinking its the remote node problem, i'll try opening another channel with one of ACINQ's node... i'll let you know how that goes... Which other nodes do you recommend? Thanks for your time and answers!

[Rath_]

Which other nodes do you recommend?

ACINQ's node should be completely fine. You can use 1ml.com to choose another node. Scroll down a little and you should see "Top Capacity Nodes" and "Most Connected Nodes". Any of the nodes listed there should be a good choice.

[wchancao]

I searched this node on 1ml.com and it only have my channel open, that's why my payments didn't found a path... 

So, now i want to close this channel, but whats the difference between "Close channel" and "Force-close channel"?

[Rath_]

So, now i want to close this channel, but whats the difference between "Close channel" and "Force-close channel"?

You should use "Force-close" only when the other party hasn't been online for some time. As a counter-cheat measure, the closing transaction will be delayed by a week so that the other party has enough time to verify if an old state of the channel was not published. If you use "Close channel" then a cooperative channel closure occurs and the closing transaction is broadcast instantly.

[wchancao]

I was reading your guide again, and got two doubts, first one:

- 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,

That means that if I backup a new channel, all other channels will be force-closed?

And the second one: if the funding transaction gets confirmed after 24 hours, channel will not be created but funds will be locked/lost? I mean, how does the mempool knows that this transaction is for opening a channel, and that after 24 hours is not going to be valid/useful? Can a transaction auto-remove itself from the mempool after a period of time? I don't know if this is a crazy question... 

[Chikito]

I'll switch to sats and let you know if it was that silly detail... 

Solved?

I searched this node on 1ml.com and it only have my channel open, that's why my payments didn't found a path... 

try to suggest electrum channel at a different time.

next time, try to insert picture and log in your post. it could make it easier for member analysing your problem

[wchancao]

I'll switch to sats and let you know if it was that silly detail... 

Solved?

I searched this node on 1ml.com and it only have my channel open, that's why my payments didn't found a path... 

try to suggest electrum channel at a different time.

next time, try to insert picture and log in your post. it could make it easier for member analysing your problem

Got it! Thanks!

[Rath_]

That means that if I backup a new channel, all other channels will be force-closed?

There are two types of channel backups in Electrum. The first one ('File -> Save backup') backs up only information required to reestablish the connection with the other party and request a forced channel closure. This kind of backup is called a Static Channel Backup. Data-loss protection discourages the other party from providing the old state of the channel. The second method is backing up each channel individually. Apparently, such backups contain the latest commitment state of the channel so a force-close is not required.

And the second one: if the funding transaction gets confirmed after 24 hours, channel will not be created but funds will be locked/lost?

The funds definitely are not going to be locked/lost. I will let you know in the morning after I have reviewed the code. If anyone is interested then search for "CHANNEL_OPENING_TIMEOUT" variable.

Can a transaction auto-remove itself from the mempool after a period of time?

No. Most nodes will drop any transaction stuck in the mempool after 2 weeks. However, even if a transaction is dropped, someone could rebroadcast it at any time and it would be still valid as long as the UTXOs used in that transaction haven't been spent.

[nc50lc]

-snip-

Yes, im thinking its the remote node problem, i'll try opening another channel with one of ACINQ's node... i'll let you know how that goes... Which other nodes do you recommend? Thanks for your time and answers!

Try Node: aranguren.org.
I can't vouch for the privacy/security but it's reliable enough, the good thing is they still haven't force-closed my long-opened channel unlike others.

[wchancao]

What happens if a closing channel tx is not confirmed and after 2 weeks the nodes drop the tx? The channel state changes to OPEN again?

[nc50lc]

What happens if a closing channel tx is not confirmed and after 2 weeks the nodes drop the tx? The channel state changes to OPEN again?

That's very hard to answer since it never happened to me; perhaps if someone experienced this, he can leave a reply on what happened.

My guesses based from the code: there's no transition from "CLOSING"/"FORCE-CLOSING" to "OPEN" so it's a no.
Channel State Transitions: https://github.com/spesmilo/electrum/blob/master/electrum/lnchannel.py#L98-L126

If it was force-closed by the other party, it will remain open in your client since there's no confirmed closing transaction.
Channel States (read the comments): https://github.com/spesmilo/electrum/blob/master/electrum/lnchannel.py#L83-L85

[Rath_]

What happens if a closing channel tx is not confirmed and after 2 weeks the nodes drop the tx? The channel state changes to OPEN again?

That should never happen. As I said a few posts above, even if a transaction is dropped, it could be broadcast again. Since channels' on-chain balance changes only on their opening and closure, the dropped closing transaction would be still valid. In a case of cooperative closure, both nodes should keep broadcasting the closing transaction or sign a new transaction with a higher fee. If the channel continued to operate normally, someone would eventually lose money once the closing transaction has been confirmed.

[moejoejay]

Electrum: 4.02


i create an Payment Channel but the transfer was canceled from the opposite ( just the process during a phone call not the bitcoin transaction in any way ) , so i tried to close the channel after 30 min. of creating in the state of none confirmed.

and now the channel ist still in Status "Shutdown". so how long will it take to get the funds back ?


best regards




 

[nc50lc]

and now the channel ist still in Status "Shutdown". so how long will it take to get the funds back ?

There should be an unconfirmed 'close channel' transaction in your history, you'll get the funds back after it confirms.

But is there an 'open channel' transaction in your history and, was your on-chain balance reduced?
Because the way you described it: there's no opening transaction occurred.

[moejoejay]

In the History there is no Closed channel only the "open channel" highlighted in red.

I tried to explore the channel on https://1ml.com/ over the channel id but i havent found anything.

The Node ID is: 0279c22ed7a068d10dc1a38ae66d2d6461e269226c60258c021b1ddcdfe4b00bc4

After i created the channel the channel-transaction was proceseed but without an confirm ( the fee for the channel was not so high for an immediately  confirmation for it).

Edit: This is the transaction (Funding-Transaktion) to establish the  payment channel: https://blockstream.info/tx/dad4361ab2edaca663b76047f345e54576d600640b65e0e93531c738269486b0

best regards

 

[moejoejay]

@arorts:

did u get ur funds back ?

i think my problem is really similar but  i havent tried the force close option.. not yet

best regards  

[Rath_]

In the History there is no Closed channel only the "open channel" highlighted in red.

Can you post a screenshot of it? I am not sure what the red highlight means. "Force-close" should work for you, but you will have to wait at least 1 week before the closing transaction is confirmed. Can you see "Close" too?

I tried to explore the channel on https://1ml.com/ over the channel id but i havent found anything.

Electrum creates private channels which are not discoverable by such explorers.

[nc50lc]

In the History there is no Closed channel only the "open channel" highlighted in red.

Can you post a screenshot of it? I am not sure what the red highlight means. -snip-

It's probably the label of the transactions in the history, it's red if the funds is outgoing.
"Open channel" of course is colored red.

[moejoejay]

i'm going to take an force channel shutdown

neverthless thanks for guidance from yours

next time i'm trying testnet first.

edit:

i've started the force closing process and i think it works.

best regards


 

[wchancao]

Hello, if someone wants to open a channel with me, what info does he need from me (node id, pub key?) and where do i get that info in electrum?

[moejoejay]

i tried a 2nd time on testnet and i tried to establish an payment with an opened channel but i doesnt't work

Steps:

Create 2 Electrum LN Wallets
Sent test coins to wallet1

Wallet1: create an payment channel with enough funds to spent.
Wallet2: create an invoice.

Wallet1: Send the invoice for Wallet2 over lightning.

Result:  Error Message: Path not found.

Then i found an other way for testing

Using this site: https://starblocks.acinq.co/  this is an virtual starbucks coffe shop  ( thnx to @nc50lc )

And this transaction works everytime i've tried so far

so, whats wrong with my own testing structure with the 2 electrum wallets ?  

best regards

[Rath_]

Hello, if someone wants to open a channel with me, what info does he need from me (node id, pub key?) and where do i get that info in electrum?

You can get your node's id by typing "nodeid()" in the Console. You can enable it in "View -> Show Console". Check out this reddit post for more instructions on getting an inbound channel from lnbig. I am not sure about how you can make it work for other nodes. Ask the other node to open a channel with you using your node's id after you connect to their node from the console.

so, whats wrong with my own testing structure with the 2 electrum wallets ?

Are both of these wallets connected to the same node? Are they open at the same time? Did you spend some of the coins from the second wallet in order to make space for incoming funds?

[moejoejay]

Are both of these wallets connected to the same node?

i thought i need only one wallet with an payment channel  cause the 2cnd wallet is connected as an peer over the lightning nodes and so also with the channel  ?.
am i wrong ?

space for incoming funds?

where i am able to check that i have enough space for incoming funds ? 

best regards

 

[Rath_]

i thought i need only one wallet with an payment channel  cause the 2cnd wallet is connected as an peer over the lightning nodes and so also with the channel  ?.

The second wallet also needs to have an open channel with some node. Both of your wallets need to be online and the receiving wallet needs to have some inbound capacity (check the answer below). You seem to be a little confused about what the Lightning Network is. This video might help you.

where i am able to check that i have enough space for incoming funds ?  

I have described it in the fourth point of the walkthrough. If you don't have any inbound capacity then you have to spend some coins over the Lightning Network.

[arorts]

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.

At the moment, the channel status remains unchanged as "reestablishing" so I tried to force close (it warned me it'd take up to 600 blocks to get funds back) but it ultimately failed as it threw this error:

https://imgur.com/a/1HghOwk

It seems as if unsigned Txs have a longer time lock than signed Txs so I guess I shouldn't have to wait longer than 600 blocks to report back my findings.

Wow!. It's been over a month and still I see locked coin in a LN channel from a transaction I created but didn't ultimately sign.

How come the channel status keeps saying "reestablishing" after so long without automatically unlocking it??

I applied freeze sending. I then tried to force-close it but it failed: "bad-txns-inputs-missingorspent"

Any pointers?  

[nc50lc]

I applied freeze sending. I then tried to force-close it but it failed: "bad-txns-inputs-missingorspent"

Any pointers?  

If the locktime (height or time) is still not reached, the error message alongside with the server error should be "non-final".

That looks like a missing input error which was caused by trying to double-spend a already spent output or not-existed at all;
Can you check your wallet for possible closing transaction that wasn't labeled?
Paste the "open channel" transaction's TXID (in a block explorer) and check the non-change address output if it's already spent.
Also check if it was sent to one of your own wallet's addresses.

If there's no "open channel" transaction, perhaps there's no established channel to begin with.

How come the channel status keeps saying "reestablishing" after so long without automatically unlocking it??

If it didn't see a confirmed closing transaction, it won't transition to "Closed" but rather stay "Open"
and "Reestablishing" is a state based from the other peer of the open channel, means the channel is open but trying to re-connect to the other LN node.

[moejoejay]

@bitcryptex:

The second wallet also needs to have an open channel with some node

Thats not mentioned in any way in ur walkthrough. Or I'm to blind to see

 

This video might help you.

thnx for it

 

If you don't have any inbound capacity then you have to spend some coins over the Lightning Network.

u right here i've found some additional options to gain inbound capacity: 

https://medium.com/lightningto-me/practical-solutions-to-inbound-capacity-problem-in-lightning-network-60224aa13393

best regards 

[moejoejay]

Update:

My Bitcoin Realnet Channel which ive closed is fully closed yesterday , so approx 1 Day for Force-Shutdown.

 
I made one Transaction in Testnet successfully, but it seems a little bit of gambling. Mostly the comes the message "Payment Failed after 10 Attempts"

I got this, with Payment Channels from aranguren.org on both Wallets.

Update:
So either the LN-Network Routing is so buggy or it's an error caused by Electrum

dont know

best regards  

[moejoejay]

ok i have have to correct sth. 

it seems that my understanding about balance and inbound capacity is not as good as is thought.
good explanation here: https://blog.muun.com/the-inbound-capacity-problem-in-the-lightning-network/

in electrum i can see the availiable amount for sending an recievung from all channels capacity  on the top of the interface

and now almost all transfers in the testnet are working

thanks so far for this tut which brings me further

best regards 

[moejoejay]

@arorts:

did ur channels closing ?  my ones reopended  after a period of time with the status "redeemed".

best regards    

[nc50lc]

did ur channels closing ?  my ones reopended  after a period of time with the status "redeemed".

Sorry to barge in but "redeemed" means that the fund is now spendable not a re-opened channel.
When you force-close a channel, it will create an "our_ctx_to_local" transaction that spends the closing transaction,
it can't be broadcast until a number of blocks (shown in the transaction history) has passed and will automatically broadcast if Electrum is open.

I applied freeze sending. I then tried to force-close it but it failed: "bad-txns-inputs-missingorspent"

Any pointers?  

If there's no "open channel" transaction, perhaps there's no established channel to begin with.

Update to this: I've experienced this just now when I tried to open a channel with another instance of Electrum while another is opening a channel.
The error message is "Assertion error" then a "Disconnected" channel was created with reflected Lightning balance but the on-chain balance wasn't deducted.
There's no "Open channel" transaction either.

When I tried to Close the channel, it just returned with an error (as expected) and the status changed to "shutdown".
When I tried to force-close the "Shutdown" channel, it returns with the same error as yours since there's no valid input.
I tried to reproduce it trice and the "bugged LN funds" reached 0.06 tBTC while my original onchain funds is only 0.02 tBTC and it wasn't spent.

So your LN funds must be a bug to begin with if there's no "Open channel" in your history.

[arorts]

I applied freeze sending. I then tried to force-close it but it failed: "bad-txns-inputs-missingorspent"

Any pointers?  

If the locktime (height or time) is still not reached, the error message alongside with the server error should be "non-final".

That looks like a missing input error which was caused by trying to double-spend a already spent output or not-existed at all;
Can you check your wallet for possible closing transaction that wasn't labeled?
Paste the "open channel" transaction's TXID (in a block explorer) and check the non-change address output if it's already spent.
Also check if it was sent to one of your own wallet's addresses.

If there's no "open channel" transaction, perhaps there's no established channel to begin with.

How come the channel status keeps saying "reestablishing" after so long without automatically unlocking it??

If it didn't see a confirmed closing transaction, it won't transition to "Closed" but rather stay "Open"
and "Reestablishing" is a state based from the other peer of the open channel, means the channel is open but trying to re-connect to the other LN node.

There's an "Open channel" entry in History. However, the transaction ID doesn't show up in the blockchain after trying to explore it. (  I abandoned the attempt to open channel with the merchant and I did not sign the transaction so that's perhaps the reason of missing input).

How could I retrieve my locked funds? It's been forever in locked state.

[nc50lc]

There's an "Open channel" entry in History. However, the transaction ID doesn't show up in the blockchain after trying to explore it. (  I abandoned the attempt to open channel with the merchant and I did not sign the transaction).

How could I retrieve my locked funds? It's been forever in locked state.

If it's not showing in the blockchain, then perhaps it's saved as a "local transaction"
since the server where you're connected to won't see it in its database nor mempool, it will change into "local" from unconfirmed/others.

The funds should be restored by removing the local transaction from the history (right-click->remove) or read the next sentence.
For the channel (or funds), I still haven't found a way to remove those "bugged channels" that I've created in testnet
but if there's no other active channels in your wallet, you can just create another wallet by restoring your wallet's seed phrase.

[arorts]

There's an "Open channel" entry in History. However, the transaction ID doesn't show up in the blockchain after trying to explore it. (  I abandoned the attempt to open channel with the merchant and I did not sign the transaction).

How could I retrieve my locked funds? It's been forever in locked state.

If it's not showing in the blockchain, then perhaps it's saved as a "local transaction"
since the server where you're connected to won't see it in its database nor mempool, it will change into "local" from unconfirmed/others.

The funds should be restored by removing the local transaction from the history (right-click->remove) or read the next sentence.
For the channel (or funds), I still haven't found a way to remove those "bugged channels" that I've created in testnet
but if there's no other active channels in your wallet, you can just create another wallet by restoring your wallet's seed phrase.

Seems like "history" is just a descriptive log.  I just removed the entry from History and that didn't make any difference as funds are still locked.

[nc50lc]

Seems like "history" is just a descriptive log.  I just removed the entry from History but that didn't seem to make any difference and funds are still locked.

Like I've said above (Post #50), the lightning funds below must be a "bug" and there's no on-chain funds deducted.
And upon deleting the local transaction in the history, your non-spendable UTXO(s) should be available again.

I have tried to tinker the wallet file (testnet), I've found out that you can manually remove those bugged channels by removing the "channel backup" entry in the wallet file.
But that's quite dangerous if you don't know what you're doing so, restoring the seed should be enough if there no active channels in your wallet.

Here's the the important part (quoting myself):

I tried to reproduce it trice and the "bugged LN funds" reached 0.06 tBTC while my original onchain funds is only 0.02 tBTC and it wasn't spent.

[arorts]

Seems like "history" is just a descriptive log.  I just removed the entry from History but that didn't seem to make any difference and funds are still locked.

Like I've said above (Post #50), the lightning funds below must be a "bug" and there's no on-chain funds deducted.
And upon deleting the local transaction in the history, your non-spendable UTXO(s) should be available again.

I have tried to tinker the wallet file (testnet), I've found out that you can manually remove those bugged channels by removing the "channel backup" entry in the wallet file.
But that's quite dangerous if you don't know what you're doing so, restoring the seed should be enough if there no active channels in your wallet.

Here's the the important part (quoting myself):

I tried to reproduce it trice and the "bugged LN funds" reached 0.06 tBTC while my original onchain funds is only 0.02 tBTC and it wasn't spent.

Cool. I restored my wallet and it's now all back to normal. Thank you.

[nc50lc]

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 one week. In both cases, you won't be able to specify the closing transaction fee. Other implementations have such a feature.

@BitCryptex I think it will only need an average of 1 day to retrieve the funds in case of force-closure.
I've tried to force close mine and according to this:


It will only require 144blocks = 1day (for 10min/block) to broadcast the saved "our_ctx_to_local" transaction.
And it did automatically broadcast after a day+.

[Rath_]

@BitCryptex I think it will only need an average of 1 day to retrieve the funds in case of force-closure.

Thank you. Electrum apparently matches other node's CSV delay as long as it is less than 2016 blocks. One week is the default value which I am not sure in what case is used. Most channels can be force-closed with a 144 block (~1 day) delay.

[DigitalMonster]

You can get your node's id by typing "nodeid()" in the Console. You can enable it in "View -> Show Console". Check out this reddit post for more instructions on getting an inbound channel from lnbig. I am not sure about how you can make it work for other nodes. Ask the other node to open a channel with you using your node's id after you connect to their node from the console.

It also doesn't work to open a channel between your two test wallets, writes this error

[Rath_]

It also doesn't work to open a channel between your two test wallets, writes this error

Could you change your language to English in the Electrum settings and post the screenshot again?

[nc50lc]

It also doesn't work to open a channel between your two test wallets, writes this error
http://savephoto.ru/f/82zy4rkw51sk19

It looks like the same error as this:
electrum.lnutil.ConnStringFormatError: Don't know any addresses for node: ******
I got that when I tried to open a channel between two Electrum wallets.

That's probably because Electrum's channels are private.

[DigitalMonster]

It also doesn't work to open a channel between your two test wallets, writes this error
http://savephoto.ru/f/82zy4rkw51sk19

It looks like the same error as this:
electrum.lnutil.ConnStringFormatError: Don't know any addresses for node: ******
I got that when I tried to open a channel between two Electrum wallets.

That's probably because Electrum's channels are private.

Yes i tried to open a channel between two Electrum wallets. How I can open channels between wallets ?

while there is no own mine node, there is no sense to open in LN and pay huge fees there, now I send payments when there is no rush in the network for 1 satosh byte, and when there is a rush I use bitcoin cache for this. I want to start saving on LN by offering my clients to open private channels to my wallet

[timCF]

Hello! I'm trying to figure out where are lightning related web API methods in ElectrumX
Can't find it here
https://electrumx.readthedocs.io/en/latest/protocol-methods.html
Where should I search for them?

[nc50lc]

Hello! I'm trying to figure out where are lightning related web API methods in ElectrumX

Shouldn't it be Electrum since it acts as the lightning node, not the server?

If that's the case, this might be the one you're looking for: https://electrum.readthedocs.io/en/latest/merchant.html#lightning-payments.

[NotATether]

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.

Are these block numbers also arbitrarily chosen by Electrum or are they part of the LN protocol? It doesn't make sense to me why parties need to wait for 144 or 2016 blocks to get back their funds. These are real mainnet blocks, and the funds are in a multisig wallet, so by my intuition the funds should arrive in the first block that contains the closing transaction.

Also, do these numbers only apply to force-closed channels? So in that case 144 blocks is the usual delay and 2016 is the maximum, right?

[Rath_]

Are these block numbers also arbitrarily chosen by Electrum or are they part of the LN protocol?

The exact numbers were chosen by Electrum but they are required by the LN protocol.

It doesn't make sense to me why parties need to wait for 144 or 2016 blocks to get back their funds. These are real mainnet blocks, and the funds are in a multisig wallet, so by my intuition the funds should arrive in the first block that contains the closing transaction.

Every time you send, receive or forward a payment over the Lightning Network, the state of the channel updates. A new commitment transaction is signed by both parties when that happens. The commitment transaction can be broadcast in case the other party is offline when you decide to close the channel. As a counter cheating measure, there is a customizable timelock which gives the other party time to come back online and verify if an old state of the channel was not broadcast to the network. If you close your channel when the other party is fully cooperative then there is no timelock.

Also, do these numbers only apply to force-closed channels? So in that case 144 blocks is the usual delay and 2016 is the maximum, right?

Yes.

[realpseudozach]

Thanks for the great guide!

Here's a Twitter thread where I explain how you can get a free incoming lightning channel to your electrum:
https://twitter.com/citlayik/status/1276029870837915651?s=19

[arrowlove]

Am i correct to understand recent release of electrum wallet has standard functionality to open/fund lightning channels - all you must do is turn the functionality on??!!

Only btc or other channels/crypto's can have lightning channels on electrum?

Is electrum capable of being a true lightning node or like the standard wallet, electrum uses an existing lightning node?  (chosen from a list)

  Anyone with experience successfully running current electrum on debian can verify it works now?  Any patches needed to make it work? 

Does lightning functionality work on debian systems, in current electrum release? 

[Rath_]

Am i correct to understand recent release of electrum wallet has standard functionality to open/fund lightning channels - all you must do is turn the functionality on??!!

That's correct.

Only btc or other channels/crypto's can have lightning channels on electrum?

Since Electrum is a Bitcoin client, its Lightning implementation is limited to Bitcoin. Some forked versions of Electrum might already support the LN. At least, Electrum-LTC does.

Is electrum capable of being a true lightning node or like the standard wallet, electrum uses an existing lightning node?

It will work fine for receiving and sending payments (note that there is no multipart payments support yet), but you won't be able to route payments. Electrum uses third-party nodes only to check the current state of the channel (opening, closing, closed etc.). Technically, it's a standalone Lightning Network node with some limitations.

[arrowlove]

Thank you Rath_

any atomic swap services that accept lightning payments.....that you would recommend a lightning newbie look into?

[Rath_]

any atomic swap services that accept lightning payments.....that you would recommend a lightning newbie look into?

I have only used Lightning Conductor to refill my channels and send on-chain transactions. I have never swapped my LN balance for some altcoin, so I can't recommend any such service.

[Alberto De Luigi]

There are two types of channel backups in Electrum. The first one ('File -> Save backup') backs up only information required to reestablish the connection with the other party and request a forced channel closure. This kind of backup is called a Static Channel Backup. Data-loss protection discourages the other party from providing the old state of the channel. The second method is backing up each channel individually. Apparently, such backups contain the latest commitment state of the channel so a force-close is not required.

I tried to backup a single channel and "restore" it on another computer. What I did:
I took my second pc, installed electrum, imported the seed -> I  see my correct onchain balance, but not Lightning balance.
Then went back on my first computer's electrum -> right-click on my channel -> export. I see the message saying that the channel backup can be used only to force-close the channel, not to restore it on another device (what a pity!).
Anyway, I copied the string "channel_backup:.....hereMyChannelBackupString.....", I pasted it on the second pc, right-clicking inside the blank frame of "channels" tab.
I now see the channel on my second pc, it says: "BACKUP of ...IDhere..." with STATUS = FUNDED. The only thing I can do is force-closure of  the channel.

my thoughts:

Your lightning network wallet is strictly tied to a single device (at least, for the moment). Which is a huge limitation imo if compared to onchain operability of lightwallets. Indeed, you'll never lose your funds if that device is lost/sold etc., thanks to the backup, but changing device will cost you time and onchain fees for channel closure and re-opening. Also, you won't be able to use at the same time a wallet on desktop and mobile.

I wonder why it is technically so difficult to develop a process of "migration" of the entire wallet, channels included, to a second device. It's not just for electrum light wallet, I'm pretty sure it's the same for LND and c-lightning.

I know that Lightning channels are linked to the public key, not the IP. I think that if your IP address changes, then the updated IP is communicated through a node_announcement message to your channel counterpart (and also propagated over the network).
So what is preventing me from using the same wallet on many different devices? Why can't I easily send to my peer an immediate update and switch to another fully operative device? The only risk I can see from my side is that if I send a wrong (past) commitment transaction I could incur in a penalty (my peer thnks of a fraud and broadcasts a breach remedy transaction). But the wallet should just warn me of the risks, not stop me from switching between devices. So I think there are other technical obstacles I ignore...

ps: I'm not even sure about what is going to happen on my electrum wallet if the IP changes. What will happen to the channels? Will I only be able to force-close them, like it happens when I import a channel backup on a new device? Or this entire IP story is completely unrelated to that? Thanks for your thoughts and feedbacks.

[nc50lc]

When moving the wallet: Instead of importing the channel backup, just copy the wallet file itself to the other machine.
It's in Electrum's data directory (location)

But be warned that lightning transactions made by one copy will not reflect to the other that will cause the channel to be force-closed when launched by the outdated one.
So it's best to use an individual LN wallet in a single machine.
I think it's because the channel and the LN transactions are saved in the file itself and it must reflect the other party's copy (need clarification).

[Alberto De Luigi]

When moving the wallet: Instead of importing the channel backup, just copy the wallet file itself to the other machine.
It's in Electrum's data directory (location)

But be warned that lightning transactions made by one copy will not reflect to the other that will cause the channel to be force-closed when launched by the outdated one.
So it's best to use an individual LN wallet in a single machine.
I think it's because the channel and the LN transactions are saved in the file itself and it must reflect the other party's copy (need clarification).

Thank you, it works perfectly.

I would add this to the general guide, written for newcomers:
how to migrate Electrum wallet on another device, including LN channels (maintaining them operative):

PC1 = computer with Electrum wallet
PC2 = computer where you want to migrate the wallet

1) On PC1 access “wallets” folder containing the “.dat” file. The filename is the name you gave to the wallet upon creation (in the screnshot, it's “wallet_8”)

• Windows: path: \Users\YourUserName\AppData\Roaming\Electrum (to find it faster, open the windows search and type: %APPDATA%\Electrum)
• Mac: Finder -> Go to folder (shift+cmd+G) and type ~/.electrum
• Linux: Home Folder -> Go to Location and type ~/.electrum

https://www.albertodeluigi.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/46-e1607827409173.png

2) Copy the file (“wallet_8”) and bring it on a USB or whatever other secure support to transfer it on PC2. You can also transfer using internet, but only if you encrypted the file before.
3) On PC1 close the Electrum application, better to turn off your computer or disconnect from internet network. be sure you don't open anymore the wallet on PC1, until you finalized point 6.
4) Install Electrum on PC2 and open the wallets folder. Drag or paste here the file (in my case it's “wallet_8”) copied from PC1
5) Open Electrum app on PC2, connect to internet and check if your balance (onchain and offchain) is correct and updated. Now that you are sure the migration has been effectively done, you can proceed with point 6.
6) Go back to PC1 and delete your wallet (in my case it's “wallet_8”) to be sure you'll never open the same wallet on PC1, which could trigger a channel force closure. Once deleted that wallet, you can still use the Electrum app on PC1, but only for onchain funds or different LN wallet than the one you migrated.

[nc50lc]

Thank you, it works perfectly.

It's as expected  
and I'm glad you've also considered the warning about the channel force-closure if you've done any lightning transaction in the other copy then opened the other (outdated) copy.
If that happened, your channel will end up with a "BAD" status and then force-close; that won't reflect to the other copy and that may cause confusion, just the "close channel" transaction.

[pawanjain]

How do I open a channel between 3 nodes?

I explored Electrum but found the option to enter only one remote node id. I want to open a channel with 2 of my friends to try how this works.
Is this feature available on Electrum yet ?

Also, I read that dual funded channels will be available soon. Can we expect that on Electrum soon ?

[Rath_]

How do I open a channel between 3 nodes?
I explored Electrum but found the option to enter only one remote node id. I want to open a channel with 2 of my friends to try how this works.

You cannot open a single channel between three participants in any implementation. You need to open a separate channel to each of your friends. Note that you won't be able to open a channel with any of them if they are using Electrum as well. They need to be running a c-lightning, LND or eclair node.

Also, I read that dual funded channels will be available soon. Can we expect that on Electrum soon ?

I don't think so. Also, I am not sure what the priorities of Electrum developers are. Electrum's implementation lacks quite a few things already, for example, multi-part payments, so I wouldn't expect them to implement dual-funded channels as soon as the official specifications are updated.

[ysangkok]

Electrum's implementation lacks quite a few things already, for example, multi-part payments, so I wouldn't expect them to implement dual-funded channels as soon as the official specifications are updated.

Look at the recent commits, like e.g. this 'receiving MPP' commit. Looks like MPP has been added. I haven't tested it.

[Rath_]

Look at the recent commits, like e.g. this 'receiving MPP' commit. Looks like MPP has been added. I haven't tested it.

Only receiving capability has been added. You still won't be able to split your payment when sending it. It looks like it's a matter of time before they add it, though.

[adamvp]

Thanks for great manual!
I would like to ask if is there any way to set Lightining Network address as a change address  or addresses of on-chain transaction?
Let's assume we have 0,01 btc to pay to merchant, network fee is about 0,0005 and we have on input address 0,0113 so  we will get 0,0008 change, which will be practically useless..
We don't want to mix input addresses to avoid weakening our privacy.
I know it is possible manualy with other (Blue) Wallet, but I'd like to know if it is possible in Electrum and automatically?

[nc50lc]

I know it is possible manualy with other (Blue) Wallet, but I'd like to know if it is possible in Electrum and automatically?

That's technically not possible but since Blue wallet's lightning is custodial, funding the channel is as easy as depositing the change to your "lightning external refill address".

Electrum however doesn't work that way, you'll have to fund your channel(s) through lightning transaction from a third-party that accepts on-chain funds.
It has the "swap" feature but it wont accept small amounts like the typical change and it comes with a (third-party) fee.

We don't want to mix input addresses to avoid weakening our privacy.

In comparison, sending to the same address also "mix" or rather "link" those addresses, blue wallet's lightning refill address doesn't change AFAIK.

[BlackHatCoiner]

Hi, I'm new to the Lightning Network and I'd like to try it firstly with my favourite wallet, electrum, even if I haven't heard the best about its LN functionalities. I believe that this is the thread to discuss my problems/queries about it.

I've opened Electrum Testnet and I've enabled LN. I want to open a channel to transact some funds with my other wallet. Thus I have two electrum wallets opened. So I do create a transaction with an output of 0.003 tBTC to a multi-signature address. Correct me if I'm wrong but in order to spend from that address, two signatures are needed. One mine and one node's. That's why it is larger than the others. (?)

Okay so now I have broadcasted a transaction between me and the node. Anytime I can close it and return my money back. How can Charlie join this? Does he need to open his own channel? Or join mine? From my second wallet I generate a lightning address and I paste it on my first's "Pay to". Once I do, it probably decodes it to its HTLC form (256-bit in hex).

Once I click "Pay" it returns me this:

And that's reasonable. They probably have to connect somehow with "Bob" or in this case "STRANGESET". Excuse me if I wrote anything stupid. I'm new at this and I'm willful to fully understand it, just like I did with Bitcoin once I found out about it.

[Rath_]

Correct me if I'm wrong but in order to spend from that address, two signatures are needed. One mine and one node's. That's why it is larger than the others. (?)

Correct.

How can Charlie join this? Does he need to open his own channel? Or join mine? From my second wallet I generate a lightning address and I paste it on my first's "Pay to". Once I do, it probably decodes it to its HTLC form (256-bit in hex). [...] And that's reasonable. They probably have to connect somehow with "Bob" or in this case "STRANGESET".

You cannot join an existing channel. Right now, payment channels are established only between two people (channel factories are kind of close to what you mentioned, but they are not a thing yet). "Charlie" needs to open a channel to either the same node or any other node that is connected to your node through other channels.

Note that you won't be able to receive any funds through that channel unless you spend some coins (both parties need to maintain a channel reserve which is equal to about 1-3% of the channel's capacity, so a part of your initial payment will be used to fill other parties' reserve). If "Charlie" does not open a channel with the same node as you then his payment will need to be routed through other channels and it might fail due to lack of routes or enough liquidity in the intermediary channels.

[BlackHatCoiner]

"Charlie" needs to open a channel to either the same node or any other node that is connected to your node through other channels.

I connected "Charlie" with the same node "Alice" is connected. I broadcasted a transaction from "Charlie" to "STRANGESET" and waited for 3 confirmations. (Not sure why they've chosen 3)

I try to send funds to "Charlie" and returns me "No path found":

But this is what I get when I send money from "Charlie" to "Alice": "Failed after 10 attempts".

What is going on?

[Rath_]

[...]and waited for 3 confirmations. (Not sure why they've chosen 3)

It's a hardcoded value which you can freely choose in other implementations for each channel separately. Three is the most common value as far as I remember.

But this is what I get when I send money from "Charlie" to "Alice": "Failed after 10 attempts".

What is going on?

Did you make sure to spend some coins from Alice's channel? As I wrote in my previous post, you won't be able to receive any coins unless you make some room for incoming funds first. You can use the testnet version of yalls.org for that. Also, you can double-click on a channel and you should see how much exactly you can receive through that channel.

[BlackHatCoiner]

It's a hardcoded value which you can freely choose in other implementations for each channel separately. Three is the most common value as far as I remember.

Shouldn't this be just a default option? Not a hardcoded value. Same thing for the minimum amount of 2 mBTC.

Did you make sure to spend some coins from Alice's channel? As I wrote in my previous post, you won't be able to receive any coins unless you make some room for incoming funds first. You can use the testnet version of yalls.org for that. Also, you can double-click on a channel and you should see how much exactly you can receive through that channel.

The channel's capacity is 3 mBTC and it says that I can send 2.96416 mBTC. I sent 0.0015 mBTC on a testnet service (?) and it seems it worked:

Once I did, I closed the channel afterwards. Should I? This is the transaction that was broadcasted when I did: 46b6b2cc6570263a3a21a0ce20612d8952f5bd9a6ffa1914a14860c328270500

It's a multi-signature address sending 0.00299665 TBTC to one of my change addresses. Shouldn't there be an extra output with 0.0015 mBTC?

[Rath_]

Once I did, I closed the channel afterwards. Should I?

I wanted you to try receiving a payment after making a few small purchases on Yalls since you should have gained incoming liquidity this way.

It's a multi-signature address sending 0.00299665 TBTC to one of my change addresses. Shouldn't there be an extra output with 0.0015 mBTC?

0.0015 mBTC is equal to 150 satoshis which is below the dust limit. If an output is below the dust limit then it is added to the transaction fee automatically.

[BlackHatCoiner]

I still don't understand, though, why I can't make a simple LN transaction with two different electrum wallets. I've tried it with the link you gave me (yalls.org), but it doesn't seem to be the same when I try to pay myself. Please correct me if I'm wrong anywhere:

On the first wallet I open a channel with a LN node depositing 5mTBTC. On the second wallet I open a channel with the same LN node depositing again, 5mTBTC. I generate a LN invoice from the first wallet and enter it on the address' input field of the second wallet. I enter 2mTBTC and I click "Pay". This is what I get:

(The question mark doesn't do anything btw)

[DireWolfM14]

On the first wallet I open a channel with a LN node depositing 5mTBTC. On the second wallet I open a channel with the same LN node depositing again, 5mTBTC. I generate a LN invoice from the first wallet and enter it on the address' input field of the second wallet. I enter 2mTBTC and I click "Pay". This is what I get:

You need to open up some incoming capacity in one of the wallets.  On the "Channels" tab click on the swap button.  Send some (or all) of your lightning funds back to on-chain BTC.  That will open up some capacity for you to receive incoming lightning transactions in that wallet.

See my post here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5308304.msg56067975#msg56067975

[nc50lc]

On the first wallet I open a channel with a LN node depositing 5mTBTC. On the second wallet I open a channel with the same LN node depositing again, 5mTBTC. I generate a LN invoice from the first wallet and enter it on the address' input field of the second wallet. I enter 2mTBTC and I click "Pay". This is what I get:

Alternatively (aside from the reply above), you can send some testnet BTC here: https://starblocks.acinq.co/ and that should open up some reveiving capacity that you can see above the channels tab.
On the upper-left hand side, it says: Can send 0.00XX BTC; can receive 0.00XX BTC and it's self explanatory.

[BlackHatCoiner]

You need to open up some incoming capacity in one of the wallets.  On the "Channels" tab click on the swap button.  Send some (or all) of your lightning funds back to on-chain BTC.  That will open up some capacity for you to receive incoming lightning transactions in that wallet.

Oh, alright. I successfully made a LN transaction with electrum. I do have some questions, though. First of all, on "Swap" it shows that this service is powered by Boltz backend. What does that mean? Is it centralized? Or the backend source files are brought by Boltz? (contribution)

Secondly, when I swap my funds to increase my receiving capacity, where do they go? I checked a block explorer and it showed me a transaction in which a multi-signature address spends an output to one my receiving (bech32) addresses. Also, why was it parent? Shouldn't it be just "Unconfirmed"?

Alternatively (aside from the reply above), you can send some testnet BTC here: https://starblocks.acinq.co/ and that should open up some reveiving capacity that you can see above the channels tab.

For some reason it shows me the error below, while I have enough sending capacity:

[nc50lc]

Alternatively (aside from the reply above), you can send some testnet BTC here: https://starblocks.acinq.co/ and that should open up some reveiving capacity that you can see above the channels tab.

For some reason it shows me the error below, while I have enough sending capacity:

Now, that must be a pathing issue between your channel to the other Electrum wallet's channel, because not all of them are well-connected to the rest of the network or connected to a "super-node".
Try opening a channel to the same nodeID on both Electrums, after establishing channels, restart Electrum and wait for a few seconds 'till "95% +" connection to the lighting network.
Then try to send a new lightning transaction between the two Electrums.

Here's an example, sent from one testnet Electrum to another with channels connected to the same nodeID:


In real-world usage, pathing will be less troublesome because there are way more channels in the Bitcoin than Testnet.

[Rath_]

A new update of Electrum was released two days ago. It has brought quite a few improvements to the Lightning implementation.

* Lightning:
    - recoverable channels (see below)
    - trampoline payments (see below)
    - support multi-part-payment
    - support upfront-shutdown-script

The changelog explains each new feature quite well, so there is no point in explaining it here again. I will try to update the guide to match the changes by the end of the week.

Also, submarine swaps are now available on Android devices.

Edit: It looks like multi-part payments are not explained in the changelog. Basically, any payment can be split into smaller chunks and sent through different channels. This can drastically decrease the failure rate of transactions as well as make some of them cheaper (see this post).

[Rath_]

I have just updated the guide to reflect the changes made in the recent update. The biggest change is support for trampoline nodes which are now used by default. While it doesn't take much time to download the network graph right now, it is a significant improvement which will be more useful in the future. I also added a short FAQ section. If any questions come to your mind, don't hesitate to ask them and I will put them there.

[blueflue]

i just opened my fist lightning channel using this guide.
Does anyone know why the amount of "Can send" is only 58% of the Capacity of the channel?
Whats up with the other 42%? Can i not use them at all?

[Rath_]

Does anyone know why the amount of "Can send" is only 58% of the Capacity of the channel?
Whats up with the other 42%? Can i not use them at all?

That sounds weird. Can you share more details? What node did you connect to? How big is your channel? You can also share a screenshot of your channel details with blurred funding outpoint and channel id if you want to.

[blueflue]

Does anyone know why the amount of "Can send" is only 58% of the Capacity of the channel?
Whats up with the other 42%? Can i not use them at all?

That sounds weird. Can you share more details? What node did you connect to? How big is your channel? You can also share a screenshot of your channel details with blurred funding outpoint and channel id if you want to.

its pretty much the same as your image from first post, except for the significantly lower "can send". Capacity is the minium amount with 0.002 btc. Remote Node ID from suggested peer.
I would like to not share an image due to privacy reasons.
Since i'm new to Lightning, does this mean the 42% is not usable in this state or does it change once i make a transaction?

[Rath_]

Since i'm new to Lightning, does this mean the 42% is not usable in this state or does it change once i make a transaction?

It should show the correct value from the beginning. I don't think anything is going to change once you have sent a transaction. As you can see on my screenshot, I also opened a 0.002 BTC channel and I was able to send about 90% of the funds.

I suspect that this might be because of the node you are connected to. It sounds as if the required channel reserve was extraordinarily large. Would you mind sharing the id of your peer either here or via a private message? No one will be able to find your channel because Electrum creates private channels which are not advertised across the network.

[blueflue]

I have sent you a message with the Node ID.
If i close the channel, will i get the total capacity minus transaction fees back to my wallet?

edit: since i reached the limit for private messages, i'm replying here.

        "local_balance": 200000,
        "local_reserve": 2000,

would that not mean 1% is reserved and not 10% (198000 sat)? Its the same in your image. I dont see the correlation to the "can send" amount.

I'm using the latest 4.12 version. 3 restarts so far and no change.

[Rath_]

It took me a while to figure out what could possibly be wrong.

Since I don't have any open channels in Electrum at the moment, I experimented a bit with my LND node. I have recently spent 0.00591658 BTC on a channel opening transaction. Right now, I can spend 578 053 satoshi through that channel and its reserve is 5916 satoshi. 578 053 + 5916 = 583 969 satoshi, so it turned out that I was also missing some coins. I found an additional parameter called "Commit Fee". This value tells how much money you are going to pay for the closing transaction fee if either you or the other party broadcasts the current commitment transaction (a transaction which records balances in the channel). In my case, it was equal to 13 605 satoshi. 578 053 + 13 605 = 591 658 satoshi. Great!

So, it looks like both you and the other party signed a commitment transaction with an unnecessarily high fee. I am not sure why that happened - transaction fees are extremely low at the moment. Theoretically, the commitment transaction fee should be updated once you send an off-chain payment, but I am afraid that the node you are connected to might still force you to sign another commitment transaction with a huge fee.

I don't remember if you can specify the closing fee manually if you close the channel cooperatively in Electrum. In my opinion, this would be the best option for now. I can help you choose a better node next time.

[blueflue]

This value tells how much money you are going to pay for the closing transaction fee if either you or the other party broadcasts the current commitment transaction (a transaction which records balances in the channel).

Does this mean if i close the channel i will have to pay a ridiculous fee for the transaction? that would be about 42€ as of now.

[Rath_]

Does this mean if i close the channel i will have to pay a ridiculous fee for the transaction? that would be about 42€ as of now.

That's very likely. As far as I remember, even if you select "Close channel" instead of "Force-close channel", you won't be able to specify your own transaction fee. I believe that a cooperative close (the first option) should use a much lower fee, but I am not that familiar with Electrum implementation of the Lightning Network so don't take my words for granted

I have just found a similar case to yours on the Internet. It looks like some other people had the same problem with this particular node.

[blueflue]

well thank you for helping me out getting some clarity about the issue.
do you mind sharing the link to the other person with this issue?

the only reason i came to lightning is to save on fees and now i will have to pay a much higher amount than on any on-chain transaction
first and last time i'm using lightning.

[Rath_]

do you mind sharing the link to the other person with this issue?

Sure. I will send you a private message in a moment.

the only reason i came to lightning is to save on fees and now i will have to pay a much higher amount than on any on-chain transaction
first and last time i'm using lightning.

Electrum might not have been the best choice for the first time, but you simply got extremely unlucky with the suggested peer. If you had opened a channel to a different node, I am quite sure that you would have had a much better experience. I would suggest you using either BlueWallet or Phoenix Wallet next time. I have been running an LND node for quite some time now and I haven't run into any major problems, but it's quite a bit more complicated than using Electrum.

If you decide to close the channel, I would appreciate if you could let us know here how much you ended up paying. I hope that the cooperative close will result in significantly lower fees.

[CryptD38]

Hello
To transfer an amount between my 2 wallets, if I understand correctly the lightniht network is the best way to minimize fees AND the fastest?

Here is my case
Wallet A ~1,4 mBTC (btc purchase made with CB)
Wallet B empty
I am with Electrum 4.1.2

The idea is to transfer the whole amount from wallet A to wallet B using lightning.
I am at the confirmation stage with a transaction fee of 0.0038 mBTC
1/ Is this correct?
2/ Is there a particular procedure to do this?
3/ What are the optimum settings to do this properly?

[nc50lc]

Hello
To transfer an amount between my 2 wallets, if I understand correctly the lightniht network is the best way to minimize fees AND the fastest?

Both wallets should have an open channel before they can send Bitcoins through lightning, and the receiver should've some "receiving capacity".
In your case, it's less advisable to use lightning since you'll have to open a channel on both wallets and create inbound capacity to "Wallet B".

You may consider sending on-chain right now while the average fee is very low.
Current priority fee is 2-3 sat/vB.

Lightning is best used for small recurrent transactions.

[BlackHatCoiner]

To transfer an amount between my 2 wallets, if I understand correctly the lightniht network is the best way to minimize fees AND the fastest?

No, because of the bold part. If you want to make one transfer, the lightning network won't reduce you fees. It can be used if you want to make many micro-payments between two wallets. The transactions that open and close the lightning channel happen on-chain and thus, you'll have to pay for both of them normally. It reduces the fees of the intervening TXs. So if you just want to make one transaction between two wallets, LN won't assist you.

Essentially, LN helps two parties decide the final balance of who gets what, after lots of transactions. It's very practical thought. There's no point on clogging the block chain with lots of transactions.

[CryptD38]

Thank you for your quick answers. If this is correct, I am less enthusiastic about this network. I need to bring more anonymity for small recurrent needs of bitcoin exchange of small amounts (10$~100$):
1/ annual recurring purchase on a website for a service
2/ balancing (non recurring) a few times a year of purchase (or receipt of donation) on a wallet with btc chains that are published on the bitcoin network to transfer them between my different wallets

Really no interest in either case?
if NO, what would you see as a solution for these 2 cases?

[nc50lc]

Really no interest in either case?
if NO, what would you see as a solution for these 2 cases?

I see, it's just a few times or once a year, so just time them when the average fee rate is low (like now for example).
There's no advantage on using lightning for those use-case, as the matter of fact, the other party might close your channel due to inactivity before you can even perform your next transaction.

[BlackHatCoiner]

I need to bring more anonymity for small recurrent needs of bitcoin exchange of small amounts (10$~100$)

If you want anonymity then Bitcoin isn't your thing. You should use Monero. Not to mention that the fees are high for transferring small amounts of BTC. If you just want privacy, then use CoinJoin or mix them.

1/ annual recurring purchase on a website for a service

This can happen on LN, but once in a year? It's too long and your provider must accept LN payments. I guess, though, that it can work, it's just not worth it.

2/ balancing (non recurring) a few times a year of purchase (or receipt of donation) on a wallet with btc chains that are published on the bitcoin network to transfer them between my different wallets

I'll need you to explain further this one. I haven't understood a thing.

[CryptD38]

Re
Thank you for your follow-up. I understand that the lightning network is not the best solution.
I have opened a new thread so as not to disturb this discussion thread.
Thank you for helping me there  !
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5336691.msg56986167#msg56986167

[TechXL]

I'm seeing this error in Electrum UI when trying to open a LN channel (after trying any trampoline method in the drop down menu: ACINQ, Electrum trampolin, trampoline hodlisterco)

Could not open channel: Exception("Remote peer reported error [DO NOT TRUST THIS MESSAGE]: b'local/remote feerates are too different: remoteFeeratePerKw=253 localFeeratePerKw=9978'")

Moving the fee slider all the way to the right produced barely higher remoteFeerateperKw amounts so not sure how to get past this issue.

Any helpful pointers are much appreciated.

[Rath_]

I'm seeing this error in Electrum UI when trying to open a LN channel (after trying any trampoline method in the drop down menu: ACINQ, Electrum trampolin, trampoline hodlisterco)

There seems to be something wrong with your server's fee estimation. Try connecting to a different Electrum server. Click on the green dot in the bottom-right corner, right-click on some server and select "Use as server". Electrum should also connect to a different server on each restart.

[TechXL]

I'm seeing this error in Electrum UI when trying to open a LN channel (after trying any trampoline method in the drop down menu: ACINQ, Electrum trampolin, trampoline hodlisterco)

There seems to be something wrong with your server's fee estimation. Try connecting to a different Electrum server. Click on the green dot in the bottom-right corner, right-click on some server and select "Use as server". Electrum should also connect to a different server on each restart.

For security/trust purposes I only connect to my own Electrum Server (EPS) instance. Is there anything specific I could tweak via CLI or config file editing?
(I'm able to send regular on-chain payments and adjust fees accordingly so issue is only present with LN.)

[Rath_]

For security/trust purposes I only connect to my own Electrum Server (EPS) instance. Is there anything specific I could tweak via CLI or config file editing?

Check out the following quote. I believe that's why you are unable to open a channel.

Please note that Electrum Personal Server (EPS) cannot be
     used with lightning wallets, because channels funding addresses
     are arbitrary.

Is there any particular reason why you chose EPS over ElectrumX?

[TechXL]

For security/trust purposes I only connect to my own Electrum Server (EPS) instance. Is there anything specific I could tweak via CLI or config file editing?

Check out the following quote. I believe that's why you are unable to open a channel.

Please note that Electrum Personal Server (EPS) cannot be
     used with lightning wallets, because channels funding addresses
     are arbitrary.

Is there any particular reason why you chose EPS over ElectrumX?

I meant to say I run Electrum Rust Server v0.8.9 (so a full Electrum server) . It's the one that came with my Nodl node as it's best recommended or Pi performance reasons.

[BlackHatCoiner]

Check out the following quote. I believe that's why you are unable to open a channel.

Didn't know about that. What does it mean that the funding addresses are arbitrary? I'm not sure that I've understood. EPS allows you to enter a master public key and it should derive from there, whether the lightning channels fund arbitrarily or not.

Is there any particular reason why you chose EPS over ElectrumX?

First one that comes into my mind, you can run a pruned EPS. In ElectrumX, it has to be a full node.

[BlackHatCoiner]

What has happened with the swap feature? My channel's capacity has 0.049 tBTC, but I cannot receive anything. I'm trying to swap the lightning funds with on-chain funds to increase my receiving capacity, but it only allows me up to 0.002.

Is this a bug? Is there any other way I can increase my receiving capacity in Electrum?

[Rath_]

I'm trying to swap the lightning funds with on-chain funds to increase my receiving capacity, but it only allows me up to 0.002.

Since the service is managed by an external provider, they might have run out of coins on the testnet. Give me a couple of minutes and I will test it.

Is there any other way I can increase my receiving capacity in Electrum?

You can simply spend some coins or use some other swap service. I don't think that many of them support the testnet, though.

[BlackHatCoiner]

You can simply spend some coins or use some other swap service. I don't think that many of them support the testnet, though.

I want to spend between my wallets and not to lose the coins. What kind of swap services do you have in mind? Is there a website?

[Rath_]

What kind of swap services do you have in mind? Is there a website?

Here are the ones that I would consider using on the mainnet: Boltz, Lightning Conductor, ZigZag. Unfortunately, none of them supports testnet swaps directly from their website.

What node did you open your channel to?

[BlackHatCoiner]

What node did you open your channel to?

https://1ml.com/testnet/node/038863cf8ab91046230f561cd5b386cbff8309fa02e3f0c3ed161a3aeb64a643b9

[Rath_]

https://1ml.com/testnet/node/038863cf8ab91046230f561cd5b386cbff8309fa02e3f0c3ed161a3aeb64a643b9

I opened a channel to ion.radar.tech but it had been stuck in "REESTABLISHING" state for quite some time so I force-closed it and I will try opening a channel to some other node tomorrow.

[nc50lc]

What has happened with the swap feature? My channel's capacity has 0.049 tBTC, but I cannot receive anything. I'm trying to swap the lightning funds with on-chain funds to increase my receiving capacity, but it only allows me up to 0.002.
-snip-
Is this a bug? Is there any other way I can increase my receiving capacity in Electrum?

I think it's because the swap service provider (swap server) can only accept 0.002tBTC per swap:

• https://github.com/spesmilo/electrum/blob/master/electrum/submarine_swaps.py#L462
  
  

BTW, Boltz have a testnet swap but unfortunately, I haven't successfully sent lightning tBTC to it yet using channel connected to "endurance" (Electrum 'trampoline' channel for testnet).

• testnet.boltz.exchange | Select LN-BTC -> Bitcoin

[BlackHatCoiner]

Thank you, nc50lc! It worked. 

[eltNEG]

How can I disable trampoline routing while running electrum in daemon mode? I am running electrum on a server without a UI and I want to be able to connect to my btcpayserver lightening network.

[BlackHatCoiner]

How can I disable trampoline routing while running electrum in daemon mode? I am running electrum on a server without a UI and I want to be able to connect to my btcpayserver lightening network.

Go to Tools —> Preferences —> Lightning and uncheck the Trampoline usage. Restart electrum and now you'll be able to open a channel on any node you want.

Edit: Nevermind, read nc50lc's reply.

[nc50lc]

How can I disable trampoline routing while running electrum in daemon mode? -snip-

Use this command to disable "trampoline routing":

Code:

electrum setconfig -o use_gossip true

Alternatively, find the "config" file in your electrum data directory, edit it using a text editor, then insert this line:

Code:

"use_gossip": true,

Note: "true" because trampoline routing disables gossip.

[eltNEG]

How can I disable trampoline routing while running electrum in daemon mode? -snip-

Use this command to disable "trampoline routing":

Code:

electrum setconfig -o use_gossip true

Alternatively, find the "config" file in your electrum data directory, edit it using a text editor, then insert this line:

Code:

"use_gossip": true,

Note: "true" because trampoline routing disables gossip.

Thanks


More questions on electrum

1. Is there a notify function for lightenigng request created using electrum that works like the one for a normal address: `electrum notify <address> <callback url>`. I am currently using long pulling to get the status of a lightening request using the rhash and getrequest method.

2. Is there a way to hide some rpc functions like getseed? A walkaround that I am using is to build a proxy that validates the methods being called.

3. Is there a way for me to provide an inbound capacity from my btcpayserver to electrum?

I am sorry if my question is too much. I am trying to find a better way to add lightening to my website and the website of my clients

[moderator's note: consecutive posts merged]

[nc50lc]

By going though commands.py, I didn't find any command that fits those purpose.
https://github.com/spesmilo/electrum/blob/master/electrum/commands.py#L963-L966

For number 3, the alternative to sending some funds from Electrum to your btcpayserver is using "Reverse Swap".
https://github.com/spesmilo/electrum/blob/master/electrum/commands.py#L1230-L1232
But setting lightning_amount and onchain_amount will be tricky in the daemon because of the deductions: Boltz's service fee and the mining fee that they'll use for the on-chain return payment.

[Saterday_to_da_moon]

All the last channels I have opened in Electrum 4.1.5 recently got stuck on the 'OPENING' state (after more than 3 confirmations) and my LN payments are all failing. It was working fine the first 2 times I have use LN in Electrum.

When I checked the details of the channels, I can see this under Payments (HTPCs):

Fullfilled HTLCs
HTLC in current commitement transaction
Failed HTLCs

This issue is currently happening regardless if I'm using trampoline routing or not.

Any ideas why this is happening?

[Rath_]

Any ideas why this is happening?

Maybe it's a server related issue. Have you tried changing the server you are connected to a few times? Some implementations do not work well with the built-in Lightning Network functionality. You can also report your problem here if you still can't get it to work. You can also enable logging and share the logs with us.

[AhmedMSedeek]

Hello,

are there any plans of allowing public lightning channels on Electrum?, thus (thus enable charging payment routing fees)?

[nc50lc]

are there any plans of allowing public lightning channels on Electrum?, -snip-

As far as I can see in the repository, there's no discussion about enabling public channels in 'Issues' and 'Pull Requests'.

Filtered with "lightning" tag:

• github.com/spesmilo/electrum/issues
• github.com/spesmilo/electrum/pulls

You can ask the developers themselves or post a "pull-request wanted" topic in the 'Issues' tab.

[AhmedMSedeek]

As far as I can see in the repository, there's no discussion about enabling public channels in 'Issues' and 'Pull Requests'.

Filtered with "lightning" tag:

• github.com/spesmilo/electrum/issues
• github.com/spesmilo/electrum/pulls

You can ask the developers themselves or post a "pull-request wanted" topic in the 'Issues' tab.

Alright, Thanks a lot for your answer

[hero10]

Guys help. Trying to send via LN, not the first time.

The channel is open. There are enough limits. Last update.

But I get "mpp_timeout" and "transaction failed". What could be the reason?

[Rath_]

But I get "mpp_timeout" and "transaction failed". What could be the reason?

Since you used that channel in the past and it worked, it looks like some node in the selected routing path fails to route a part of your payment. If there was some other route available, your wallet would probably try it.

[nc50lc]

-snip-
But I get "mpp_timeout" and "transaction failed". What could be the reason?

I could also be your connection to the Lightning Network, Electrum takes time to fully connect if you're not using "Trampoline Routing" in the setting.
You can check the progress by clicking the yellow lightning icon at the lower-right hand side.

[satscraper]

Hi, I'm new to the Lightning Network and I'd like to try it firstly with my favourite wallet, electrum, even if I haven't heard the best about its LN functionalities. I believe that this is the thread to discuss my problems/queries about it.

I've opened Electrum Testnet and I've enabled LN. I want to open a channel to transact some funds with my other wallet.

Hi, probably I’m at the same stage as you were a year ago but can not move further to open LN channel in Electrum connected to testnet as the wallet's Open Channel button remains in the gray state. The wallet is topped up with 0.01 tBTC which, from my understanding, is enough for channel support. The button stays inactive no matter whether trampoline is disabled  or not. I would appreciate any suggestion on how to overcome things that block me from  LN channel opening with Electrum.

[nc50lc]

-snip- but can not move further to open LN channel in Electrum connected to testnet as the wallet's Open Channel button remains in the gray state. The wallet is topped up with 0.01 tBTC which, from my understanding, is enough for channel support. The button remains inactive no matter whether trampoline is disabled  or not. I would appreciate any suggestion on how to overcome things that block me from  LN channel opening with Electrum.

The two things that you may have missed are:

• Lightning should be enabled in the menu "Wallet->Information" if it's not ticked at least once yet (if it's created by an older version).
• The wallet's script (address) type should be Native Segwit ('bc1' address), other types including 2fa aren't compatible with Lightning.

[satscraper]

-snip- but can not move further to open LN channel in Electrum connected to testnet as the wallet's Open Channel button remains in the gray state. The wallet is topped up with 0.01 tBTC which, from my understanding, is enough for channel support. The button remains inactive no matter whether trampoline is disabled  or not. I would appreciate any suggestion on how to overcome things that block me from  LN channel opening with Electrum.

The two things that you may have missed are:

• Lightning should be enabled in the menu "Wallet->Information" if it's not ticked at least once yet (if it's created by an older version).

Thanks, that helped. Now  I have the choice between two options one of which is Remote Node ID and this is exactly  what I would like to use. But I'd like to have channel exclusively between two wallets I own, no middle-position node in between. Is that possible or the only way for me  to have my wallets LN-connected  is to establish connection of each of two wallets to one and the same  known peer?

Edit. Sorry, got it how can I do what I want. All I need is  to look again into Wallet->Information to get ID for my second node  

[nc50lc]

-snip-
Thanks, that helped. Now  I have the choice between two options one of which is Remote Node ID and this is exactly  what I would like to use. But I'd like to have channel exclusively between two wallets I own, no middle-position node in between. Is that possible or the only way for me  to have my wallets LN-connected  is to establish connection of each of two wallets to one and the same  known peer?

Those two are the only option if "Trampoline Routing" is enabled.
You can customize the remote node once you've disabled the said feature in the settings.

However, I haven't succeeded yet with creating a channel between two Electrum wallets.
You can try though - by providing each other's 'Lightning Node ID' as the "Remote Node ID" (Wallet->Information) followed by the IP address and port.
eg: 02d50fdf1806b54aee46a0ed8c6d8512bee87e88e25029f3384a983c43c5d6a16c@111.111.111.111:9735
But like I've said, it never worked at my end.

[satscraper]

-snip-
Thanks, that helped. Now  I have the choice between two options one of which is Remote Node ID and this is exactly  what I would like to use. But I'd like to have channel exclusively between two wallets I own, no middle-position node in between. Is that possible or the only way for me  to have my wallets LN-connected  is to establish connection of each of two wallets to one and the same  known peer?

Those two are the only option if "Trampoline Routing" is enabled.
You can customize the remote node once you've disabled the said feature in the settings.

However, I haven't succeeded yet with creating a channel between two Electrum wallets.
You can try though - by providing each other's 'Lightning Node ID' as the "Remote Node ID" (Wallet->Information) followed by the IP address and port.
eg: 02d50fdf1806b54aee46a0ed8c6d8512bee87e88e25029f3384a983c43c5d6a16c@111.111.111.111:9735
But like I've said, it never worked at my end.

I have spent two days trying to stitch directly my two Electrum clients by opening LN channel and all  my attempts have ended with CanceledError(). My both electrum clients were online showing fully sync LN graph.   The format for remote node ID had been properly chosen.

The communication  between two of my clients  was  established right off the bat after opening separate channels for each client with the same public LN node ("endurance" in my case).

Probably I should give up all further attempts to make direct LN channel between   my Electrum wallets.   

[nc50lc]

-snip-
Probably I should give up all further attempts to make direct LN channel between   my Electrum wallets.  >:( 

Same here like I've mentioned, that confirmed that I'm not the only one having trouble establishing a channel between two Electrum. :)

Try to post a new issue on Electrum's Github Repository: github.com/spesmilo/electrum/issues
Maybe the Devs have a workaround. But first, use 'search' to look for similar issues .

[FatFork]

<bump>

This topic deserves to be at the top.

[NotATether]

So I get that you need to make a backup of the wallet every time you open a channel. But are these backups encrypted?

In older versions of Electrum, at least in 4.0.9, the backup files created using "Save Backup" are not encrypted.

[nc50lc]

So I get that you need to make a backup of the wallet every time you open a channel. But are these backups encrypted?
-snip-

Those are just "channel backups" which doesn't contain the wallet itself.
I believe it's encrypted by the wallet's xpub (CMIIAW) and it can't be imported to other wallets due to failure in decryption.

For the save backup, it'll be the same as the wallet. If it's encrypted, the backup will be encrypted.

[moejoejay]

Same here like I've mentioned, that confirmed that I'm not the only one having trouble establishing a channel between two Electrum.

Im not really a pro but i got this working on testnet ( not main) .

What ive had did, i playing around with settings the trampoline server first then switched off and add some other peers to.

Then i made some spends to the testnet Starblocks: https://starblocks.acinq.co

Then i had the ability to spend and recieve ( even without an invoice ) between 2 testnet wallet without  any problems.

may that helps

best regards 

[nc50lc]

Same here like I've mentioned, that confirmed that I'm not the only one having trouble establishing a channel between two Electrum.

Then i had the ability to spend and recieve ( even without an invoice ) between 2 testnet wallet without  any problems.

The issue was opening a channel between two Electrum wallets (e.g. "Electrum wallet 1" as your Electrum wallet, "Electrum wallet 2" as remote node).
Means that "Electrum wallet 1" should be able to open a channel by using "Electrum wallet 2" 's nodeid (and IP).

There hasn't been any issue with sending/receiving through lightning between two Electrum wallets as long there's enough channel capacity.

[moejoejay]

The issue was opening a channel between two Electrum wallets (e.g. "Electrum wallet 1" as your Electrum wallet, "Electrum wallet 2" as remote node).
Means that "Electrum wallet 1" should be able to open a channel by using "Electrum wallet 2" 's nodeid (and IP).

Ok than i missunderstood this, u mean the direct connection between 2 wallets with the same ln node or.

I tried this out with an same endurance Node on both (local/remote) sides.
Works flawless
but may u mean anything else


best regards


 

[nc50lc]

The issue was opening a channel between two Electrum wallets (e.g. "Electrum wallet 1" as your Electrum wallet, "Electrum wallet 2" as remote node).
Means that "Electrum wallet 1" should be able to open a channel by using "Electrum wallet 2" 's nodeid (and IP).

Ok than i missunderstood this, u mean the direct connection between 2 wallets with the same ln node or.

I tried this out with an same endurance Node on both (local/remote) sides.
Works flawless
but may u mean anything else

No, if you follow the previous conversation, it'll point you to the quoted reply in the post at the top of this page.
It's all about direct connection between two Electrum, so there'll be no other node like "endurance" in between.

If endurance node is involved, it's now: between Electrum1 and endurance; and, between Electrum2 and endurance

This reply:

-snip-
Thanks, that helped. Now  I have the choice between two options one of which is Remote Node ID and this is exactly  what I would like to use. But I'd like to have channel exclusively between two wallets I own, no middle-position node in between. Is that possible or the only way for me  to have my wallets LN-connected  is to establish connection of each of two wallets to one and the same  known peer?

As you can see, what you've tried is always been possible and the "only way" if direct connection wont work.
What he want is a direct channel between his two Electrum wallets, which doesn't work.

[NotATether]

I know its possible to run Electrum as a daemon and as a GUI on the same machine simultaneously - I already tried that a while ago.

I'm thinking of setting up a watchtower on the same machine (so I don't have to rent a box for that) so I don't have to worry about keeping Electrum open all the time.

Anyone here tried doing that before?

[Saint-loup]

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.

Does anyone know if there is currently a convenient way to choose which channel you want to be used to send a LN transaction, when you have several channels opened, without having to freeze all the other channels during the transaction please? Same question when you need to receive a payment through a generated invoice : is there a way to receive the payment on a specific channel without freezing all the other channels till you receive the transaction?

[BlackHatCoiner]

Does anyone know if there is currently a convenient way to choose which channel you want to be used to send a LN transaction, when you have several channels opened, without having to freeze all the other channels during the transaction please?

Most wallet software will choose the cheapest path, which is usually the shortest one. What do you want to accomplish? I don't find it reasonable to want your transaction to be charged higher. I could think of a privacy-related reason, but even that is invalid, especially when you receive, because you reveal your public key in BOL11 invoice.

[Saint-loup]

Does anyone know if there is currently a convenient way to choose which channel you want to be used to send a LN transaction, when you have several channels opened, without having to freeze all the other channels during the transaction please?

Most wallet software will choose the cheapest path, which is usually the shortest one. What do you want to accomplish? I don't find it reasonable to want your transaction to be charged higher. I could think of a privacy-related reason, but even that is invalid, especially when you receive, because you reveal your public key in BOL11 invoice.

No it's not a matter of privacy or of datas shown in the BOLT11 invoice. I don't want to accomplish anything special actually, I just want to be able to do that because I have different channels using different trampoline nodes, and I want to be able to decide which trampoline node I want to use because some of them seem to work more efficiently than other. In addition I also want to do that to be able to manage the receiving/sending capacity of my different channels. If I need to increase the receiving capacity of one channel, I want to be able to select it to send my next payment, same thing for a channel with a low sending capacity.

[BlackHatCoiner]

I want to be able to decide which trampoline node I want to use because some of them seem to work more efficiently than other.

By more efficiently, you mean faster?

If I need to increase the receiving capacity of one channel, I want to be able to select it to send my next payment, same thing for a channel with a low sending capacity.

I see. Unfortunately, no. It isn't possible from any user interfaces, as far as my lightning software experience goes. That's rather a specialized setting, only accessible if you dive into the source code. If you don't do that, which I presume you won't, your best course is to complete the payment using any channel and rebalance afterwards using a plugin. In both C-Lightning and LND, there is such plugin[1][2], but I'm not sure about Electrum.

[1] https://github.com/lightningd/plugins/tree/master/rebalance
[2] https://github.com/C-Otto/rebalance-lnd

[nc50lc]

-snip-

Does anyone know if there is currently a convenient way to choose which channel you want to be used to send a LN transaction, when you have several channels opened, without having to freeze all the other channels during the transaction please? Same question when you need to receive a payment through a generated invoice : is there a way to receive the payment on a specific channel without freezing all the other channels till you receive the transaction?

Freeze is the only way to accomplish that unfortunately.

You can utilize rebalance to reduce a channel's inbound capacity by sending your other channel's amount to it so that it can't be used to receive until it gains inbound capacity again.
Selecting two channels using CTRL-click will enable the grayed-out "Rebalance" button.
You can also setup channels to Electrum's trampoline nodes and others with normal nodes so whenever you disable "Use trampoline routing", your channels with trampoline nodes will have their send capacity frozen.
But those are more inconvenient than just freezing the channel's inbound/outbound capacity.

[internetional]

Yesterday I opened my first channel via Electrum. For the node to which I could open the channel, the default option was trampoline hodlisterco. I decided not to change anything for the first time, and opened a channel to it. But this node is offline for already more than 24 hours. So I cannot use my money.

Is this a usual status for this node? Is it worth waiting, or it's time to force-close the channel and to open another one to another, non-default node?

[nc50lc]

Is it offline or just "Disconnected" in your channel status?
Because it's available at my end (mainnet).

Recent screenshot (just now):

-snip-
Is this a usual status for this node? Is it worth waiting, or it's time to force-close the channel and to open another one to another, non-default node?

Probably not, those are hand-picked by the devs, one thing for being active Lightning nodes.

[internetional]

Is it offline or just "Disconnected" in your channel status?

You are right, it was disconnected. Doesn't "Disconnected" mean offline?

Today the status of the channel is "Open". I checked several times, everything is okay. I sent some transfers, they were routed quickly.

I don't understand one more thing. My outbound liquidity initially was around 1.2 M Sat, but when I tried to send more than 500 K, I got an error like this:

HTLC value sum (sum of pending htlcs: 0.0 sat plus new htlc: 580239.726 sat) would exceed max allowed: 577956.0 sat

. So, I needed 3 transfers to send 1.2 M Sat. Why?

[nc50lc]

Is it offline or just "Disconnected" in your channel status?

You are right, it was disconnected. Doesn't "Disconnected" mean offline?

Not all the time, it can also be interpreted as your lightning node (electrum client) can't establish connection to the other party.
Most of the time, you'll just have to wait for a few minutes for the status to switch to "OPEN" if there nothing wring with the connection.

I don't understand one more thing. My outbound liquidity initially was around 1.2 M Sat, but when I tried to send more than 500 K, I got an error like this:

HTLC value sum (sum of pending htlcs: 0.0 sat plus new htlc: 580239.726 sat) would exceed max allowed: 577956.0 sat

. So, I needed 3 transfers to send 1.2 M Sat. Why?

I haven't sent amount higher that that with lightning so I haven't experienced it, but I believe it's a config of your channel set by the remote node:

• github.com/spesmilo/electrum/blob/master/electrum/lnchannel.py#L762
• github.com/spesmilo/electrum/blob/master/electrum/lnchannel.py#L961-L966

[alexrossi]

If I have a headless watchtower (electrum on a linux server), with what command I can check what channels is currently monitoring?

with "python3 run_electrum get_watchtower_ctn" I'm asked the channel endpoint, and I also think is a client related command (it asks to have an active wallet)



Also:

 python3 run_electrum get_ssl_domain
Supplied CA Not Found in Trusted CA Store.

Is normal that with a standard letsencrypt cert I always get this output, even if the watchtower is currently running?

[bitmover]

Hello

I have a question about inbound capacity.

If I keep sending bitcoin over lightning to my binance account  , withdrawal and send again

Will this increase my inbound capacity?

Also

If I created the Channel with the minimum 0.002 btc  will I have problems later with capacity?

Thanks.

[alexrossi]

Hello

I have a question about inbound capacity.

If I keep sending bitcoin over lightning to my binance account  , withdrawal and send again

Will this increase my inbound capacity?

Also

If I created the Channel with the minimum 0.002 btc  will I have problems later with capacity?

Thanks.

If you do the withdrawal again on LN it will lower the inbound capacity, and you will still pay the (at least small) tx fees of LN. So it wouldn't be effective.

If you do the withdrawal on chain, then yes, you will have higher inbound capacity at the cost of a onchain tx

[nc50lc]

If I keep sending bitcoin over lightning to my binance account  , withdrawal and send again

Will this increase my inbound capacity?

The general answer is no, the gained inbound capacity from sending is not permanent.
As you withdraw from Binance to your Electrum via Lightning, your inbound capacity decreases by its amount.

It depends on the amounts though, "sending" increases your inbound capacity while "receiving" decreases it.
So whether it gains or not depends on how much bitcoins over Lighting you send or receive.