Current best software for Lightning with full bitcoincore?

[jerryskies]

I may need soon a LN node. What is in your humble opinion currently the best LN software with bitcoincore? Coding language used, long term support, ease of installation, features, etc? Why? Many thanks in advance for your inputs.

[Findingnemo]

I may need soon a LN node. What is in your humble opinion currently the best LN software with bitcoincore? Coding language used, long term support, ease of installation, features, etc? Why? Many thanks in advance for your inputs.

Raspiblitz may work for you if you are looking for a more automated version of Raspibolt and are ready to spend around $400 for the entire setup.

https://github.com/raspiblitz/raspiblitz : build your own Lightning & Bitcoin Full node on a RaspberryPi with an optional Display.

There are a lot of option that depends on the purpose of your node, and how much amount you can ready to spend, but I want to remind you that running an LN node for profit making is a bad idea, and already threads regarding this are available on bitcointalk in case if you want to refer.

Also take a look at this : All Lightning Network Threads In One Place

[Charles-Tim]

@jerryskies
Know that raspiblitz is completely different entirely from Bitcoin Core. Running lightning node is different/separate from running on-chain node.

https://github.com/raspiblitz/raspiblitz : build your own Lightning & Bitcoin Full node on a RaspberryPi with an optional Display.

This is the main website: https://raspiblitz.org/

Reason: In case he will like to watch the YouTube video guide.

And also for telegram group for questions and support. Although, that can be done on GitHub as well. It also contain some other useful information.

There are a lot of option that depends on the purpose of your node, and how much amount you can ready to spend, but I want to remind you that running an LN node for profit making is a bad idea, and already threads regarding this are available on bitcointalk in case if you want to refer.

I will agree to this because people that have ran their own lightning node for profit are not making so much profit.

[BlackHatCoiner]

What is in your humble opinion currently the best LN software with bitcoincore?

I'd say classic Core lightning. Written in C, offering performance advantage, it is known to being compatible with Bitcoin Core, and it's fairly simple to use. It also uses route randomization which preserves some privacy, as the algorithm doesn't always choose the shortest route. However, I ought to say that LND comes with more features than CLN, such as pre-installed rebalancing (it exists in CLN as well, but I've failed to install it), and is generally maintained by more people.

Installing Raspiblitz, as said, is a good idea if you haven't interacted with that stuff before. It's good to start safely, because lightning testnet barely works, so you'll have to experiment in mainnet.

[apogio]

Hi.

I am currently using Umbrel + CLN (Core Lightning) + Zeus (android) + RTL (Ride the lightning - for pc)

I 've been using LND for quite a long time. I switched to CLN in order to "just check it out" and because I wanted to give market share to CLN too. I also like Blockstream and Adam Back, so I wanted to support them. Lastly, I had an issue once with CLN and the support on telegram was helpful. Everybody above has posted about the advantages of CLN so I will not bother you with repeating them.

Zeus is a magnificent wallet. Check it out. It connect to CLN (and LND) flawlessly.

I don't really use RTL but I just mention it here because I know it's good.

Finally, as a warning, don't forget to backup your wallet properly. CLN and LND differ in the way they backup - restore your wallet. LND offers 24 words (not BIP39). CLN offers some custom alphanumeric sequences. In any case, back them up properly.

[lassdas]

I recently installed Start9 on an old laptop (Pentium Silver N5000, 8GB RAM, 2TB NVMe)
and after running it for about 3 weeks now I like it a lot.

Been running Bitcoin-nodes for more than a decade, but I never tried any of the all-in-one-packages like umbrel, myNode, or raspiblitz, so I can't really compare any of them to Start9
and it's my first contact with Lightning too, so I'm not that experienced in that field either.

It has 2* marketplaces, one maintained by the Start9 team, one maintained by community members, that offer all kinds of different services and you could even create your own marketplace if you like.

I'm currently running Bitcoin Core, electrs, LND, Ride the Lightning, ThunderHub, LNDg, Balance of Satoshis and Lightning Terminal (have to try everything at least once) on it and it runs pretty smooth, LN routing 30-100+ Tx per day through currently 28channels. I'll probably add some more when the fees go down at the weekend.


The only downside (at least for me) so far is that it's Tor-only,
like everything is Tor-only. It's both good and bad, good because everything is well hidden and bad because...well, it's Tor.
But the devs say that in the next version they'll offer clearnet-options too, guess I'll just have to be patient.


* there's actually a third, beta-testing-"Install at your own risk"-marketplace

[apogio]

I recently installed Start9 on an old laptop (Pentium Silver N5000, 8GB RAM, 2TB NVMe)
and after running it for about 3 weeks now I like it a lot.

Been running Bitcoin-nodes for more than a decade, but I never tried any of the all-in-one-packages like umbrel, myNode, or raspiblitz, so I can't really compare any of them to Start9
and it's my first contact with Lightning too, so I'm not that experienced in that field either.

It has 2* marketplaces, one maintained by the Start9 team, one maintained by community members, that offer all kinds of different services and you could even create your own marketplace if you like.

I'm currently running Bitcoin Core, electrs, LND, Ride the Lightning, ThunderHub, LNDg, Balance of Satoshis and Lightning Terminal (have to try everything at least once) on it and it runs pretty smooth, LN routing 30-100+ Tx per day through currently 28channels. I'll probably add some more when the fees go down at the weekend.


The only downside (at least for me) so far is that it's Tor-only,
like everything is Tor-only. It's both good and bad, good because everything is well hidden and bad because...well, it's Tor.
But the devs say that in the next version they'll offer clearnet-options too, guess I'll just have to be patient.


* there's actually a third, beta-testing-"Install at your own risk"-marketplace

Hello. Brilliant setup. Would you like to share more info in regards to the channels? Have you opened channels with large nodes only? Have you got high capacity channels? I am only asking because I currently have 2 channels with 2 huge nodes (BOLTZ and Wallet of Satoshi). I still haven't figured out the sweet spot on the number of channels and the capacity one should have.

[lassdas]

Well, as mentioned it's my first Lightning-steps, so I'm still kindof experimenting.

Currently my channel sizes are 1-5million sats, so not that big,
some huge nodes, like deezy.io, Kraken, Boltz, bfx, nicehash,
but also smaller ones, some I opened through LN+ swaps.

My best channels so far are Blocktank (cheapest provider of inbound liquidity I found) and Kraken,
with Kraken being the easiest and by far cheapest to rebalance (zero fee if you have Kraken-account), which is a nice bonus.

Next channels are probably going to be a bit bigger, like 10-25million, with a couple of smaller LN+swaps here and there to support newbies like myself.  
For sure going to open a bigger one to getalby (again for ease of rebalancing), maybe Wallet of Satoshi too, but I don't use their app
and I definetely need a bigger Kraken channel.

The "hardest" part is getting inbound liquidity.
I can of course do swaps, "Loop" out, or simply buy some, but it's all quite expensive and I'm not getting much in return due to my relatively low fee-settings (zero base fee and ~100-500ppm).
Guess I'll never make any profit off it, but that's not what I'm looking for anyway, I just don't want to spend more than necessary.

[jerryskies]

Hello,

Thank you so much for all your help and quality advises. My goal is to connect to a "liquidity hub" on a dex using LN to route some txs (https://docs.hydranet.ai/). It is still a work in progress, but you all helped me a lot.

Thanks again.