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[[operating_ln_node]]
== Operating a Lightning Network Node
After having read this far, you have probably set up a Lightning wallet. In this chapter we will take things one step further and set up a full Lightning node. In addition to setting one up, we will learn how to operate it and maintain it over time.
There are many reasons why you might want to set up your own Lightning node. They include:
* To be a full, active participant in the Lightning Network, not just an end-user.
* To run an e-commerce store or receive income via Lightning payments.
* To earn income from Lightning routing fees.
* To develop new services, applications, or plugins for the Lightning Network.
* To increase your financial privacy while using Lightning.
* To use some apps built on top of Lightning, like Lightning-powered Instant Messaging apps.
* For financial freedom, independence, and sovereignty.
There are costs associated with running a Lightning Network node. You need a computer, a permanent Internet connection, lots of disk space, and lots of time!
Operational costs will include electricity expenses.
But the skills you will learn from this experience are valuable and can be applied to a variety of other tasks too.
Let's get started!
=== Choosing your platform
There are many ways you can run a Lightning node ranging from a small mini-PC hosted in your home or a dedicated server to a hosted server in the cloud. The method you choose will depend on the resources you have and how much money you want to spend.
==== Why is reliability important for running a Lightning Node?
In Bitcoin hardware is not particularly important unless one is specifically running a mining node.
The Bitcoin Core node software can be run on any machine that meets its minimum requirements and does not need to be online to receive payments; only to send them.
If a Bitcoin node goes down for an extended period of time, the user can simply reboot the node and once it connects to the rest of the network, it will re-sync the blockchain.
In Lightning, however, the user needs to be online both to send _and_ to receive payments. If the Lightning user is offline it cannot receive any payments from anyone and thus its open invoices cannot be fulfilled.
Furthermore, the open channels of an offline node cannot be used to route payments. Your channel partners will notice that you are offline and cannot contact you to route a payment. If you are offline too often, they may consider the Bitcoin locked up in their channels with you to be underutilized capacity, and may close those channels. We already discussed the case of a protocol attack where your channel partner tries to cheat you by submitting an earlier commitment transaction. If you are offline and your channels aren't being monitored, then the attempted theft could succeed and you will have no recourse once the timelock expires.
Hence, node reliability is extremely important for a Lightning node.
There are also the issues of hardware failure and loss of data. In Bitcoin, a hardware failure can be a trivial problem if the user has a backup of their mnemonic phrase or private keys. The Bitcoin wallet and the bitcoin inside the wallet can be easily restored from the private keys on a new computer. Most information can be re-downloaded from the blockchain.
In contrast, in Lightning the information about the user's channels, including the commitment transactions and revocation secrets, are not publicly known and are only stored on the individual user's hardware.
Thus, software and hardware failures in the Lightning Network can easily result in loss of funds.
==== What are the types of hardware Lightning Nodes?
* **General Purpose Computers**: a Lightning Network node can be run on a home computer or laptop running Windows, Mac OS, or Linux. Typically this is run alongside a Bitcoin node.
* **Dedicated Hardware**: a Lightning Node can also be run on dedicated hardware like a Raspberry Pi, Rock64, or mini-PC. This setup would usually run a software stack including a Bitcoin node and other applications. This setup is popular as the hardware is dedicated to running and maintaining the Lightning node only and is usually set up with an installation "helper".
* **Pre-Configured Hardware**: a Lightning Network node can also be run on purpose-built hardware specifically selected and configured for it. This would include "out-of-the-box" Lightning node solutions that can be purchased as a kit or a turn-key system.
==== Running in the "cloud"
_Virtual Private Server_ (VPS) and "cloud computing" services such as Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, Amazon Web Services (AWS), or DigitalOcean are quite affordable and can be set up very quickly. A Lightning node can be hosted for between $20 and $40 per month on such a service.
However, as the saying goes, "'Cloud' is just other people's computers". Using these services means running your node on other people's computers. This brings along the corresponding advantages and disadvantages. The key advantages are convenience, efficiency, uptime, and possibly even cost. The cloud operator manages and runs the node to a high degree automatically providing you with convenience and efficiency. They provide excellent uptime and availability, often much better than what an individual can achieve at home. If you consider that just the electricity cost of running a server in many western countries is around $10 per month, then add to that the cost of network bandwidth and the hardware itself, the VPS offering becomes financially competetive. Lastly, with a VPS you need no space for a PC at home, and don't have any issues with PC noise or heat.
On the other hand there are several notable disadvantages. A Lightning node running in the "cloud" will always be less secure and less private that one running on your own computer. Additionally, these cloud computing services are very centralized. The vast majority of Bitcoin and Lightning nodes running on such services are located in a handful of data centers in Virginia, Sunnyvale, Seattle, London, and Frankfurt. When the networks or data centers of these providers have service problems, it affects thousands of nodes on so-called "decentralized" networks.
If you have the possibility and capacity of running a node on your own computer at home or in your office, then this might be preferable to running it
in the cloud. Nonetheless, if running your own server is not an option, by all means consider running one on a VPS.
==== Running a node at home
If you have a reasonable capacity internet link at home or in your office, you can certainly run a Lightning node there. Any "broadband" connection is sufficient for the purpose of running a lightweight node, and a fast connection will allow you to run a Bitcoin full node too.
While you can run a Lightning node (and even a Bitcoin node) on your laptop, it will become annoying quite fast. These programs consume your computer's resources and need to run 24/7. Your user applications like your browser or your spreadsheet will find themselves competing against the Lightning background services for your computer's resources. In other words, your browser and other desktop workloads will be slowed down.
And when your word processing app freezes up your laptop, your Lightning node will go down as well. Furthermore, you should never turn off your laptop.
All this combined together results in a set-up that is not ideal. The same will apply to your daily-use personal desktop PC.
Instead, most users will choose to run a node on a dedicated computer. Fortunately, you don't need a "server" class computer to do this. You can run a Lightning node on a mini-PC, such as a Raspberry Pi or an Atom-based fanless PC. These are simple computers which are commonly used as a media server or home automation hub. They are relatively inexpensive, costing between $50 and $150 USD at that time of this writing. To run on a mini-PC, you will need an external USB hard drive, which again is relatively inexpensive, costing approximately $50 USD. The advantage of a dedicated mini-PC as a platform for Lightning and Bitcoin nodes is that it can run continuously, silently, and unobtrusively on your home WiFi network, tucked behind your router or TV. No one will even know that this little box is actually part of a global banking system!
==== What hardware is required to run a Lightning node?
At a minimum, the following will be required to run a Lightning Node:
* **CPU**: sufficient processing power will be required to run a Bitcoin node, which will continuously download and validate new blocks. The user also needs to consider the Initial Block Download (IBD) when setting up a new Bitcoin node, which can take anywhere from several hours to several days. A 2-core or 4-core CPU is recommended.
* **RAM**: a system with 2GB of RAM will _barely_ run both Bitcoin and Lightning nodes. It will perform much better with at least 4GB of RAM. The Initial Block Download will be especially challenging with less than 4GB of RAM. More than 8GB of RAM is unnecessary, because the CPU is the greater bottleneck for these types of services, due to cryptographic operations such as signature validation.
* **Storage Drive**: this can be a Hard Drive or an Solid State Drive (SSD). An SSD will be significantly quicker for running a Bitcoin node. Most of the storage is used for the Bitcoin blockchain, which occupies more than 340GB (as of September 2020).
* **Internet Connection**: a reliable internet connection will be required to download new Bitcoin blocks, as well as to communicate with other Lightning peers. During operation the estimated data use ranges from 10GB to 100GB per month, depending on configuration. At startup a Bitcoin full node downloads the full blockchain, 340GB as of September 2020.
* **Power Supply**: a reliable power supply is required as Lightning nodes need to be online at all times. A power failure will cause in-progress payments to fail. For heavy duty routing nodes, a backup or uninterruptible power supply (UPS) is useful in the case of power outages.
Ideally, you should connect your Internet router to this UPS as well.
* **Backup**: Backup is crucial as a failure can result in loss of data and hence in loss of funds.
The user will want to consider some kind of data backup solution. This could be a cloud-based automated backup to a server or web service the user controls. Alternatively, it could be an automated local hardware backup, such as a second hard drive. For best results, both local and remote backup can be combined.
==== Switching server configuration in the cloud
When renting a cloud server, it is often cost effective to change the configuration between two phases of operation: A faster CPU and faster storage will be needed during the Initial Block Download (e.g. the first day). After the blockchain has synced, the CPU and storage speed requirements are much less, so the performance can be downgraded to a more cost-effective level.
For example, on Amazon's cloud, we would use a 8-16GB RAM, 8-core CPU (e.g. t3-large or m3.large) and faster 400GB SSD (1000+ provisioned IOPS) for the Initial Block Download (IBD), reducing its time to just 6-8 hours. Once that is complete, we would switch the server instance to a 2GB RAM, 2-core CPU (e.g. t3.small) and storage to a general purpose 1TB HDD. This will cost about the same as if you ran it on the slower server the entire time, but it will get you up and running in less than a day instead of having to wait almost a week for the IBD.
===== Permanent data storage (drive)
If you use a mini-PC or rent a server, the storage can be the costliest part, costing as much as the computer and connectivity (data) added together.
Let's have a look at the different options available. First there are two main types of drives, Hard Disk Drives (HDDs) and Solid State Drives (SSDs). HDDs are cheaper and SSDs are faster, but both do the job.
The fastest SSDs available today use the NVMe interface. The NVMe SSDs are faster in high end machines, but also more costly.
Traditional SATA-based SSDs are cheaper, but not as fast. SATA SSDs perform sufficiently well for your node setup.
Smaller computers might not be able to take advantage of NVMe SSDs.
For example, the Raspberry Pi 4 cannot benefit from them because of the limited bandwidth of its USB port.
To choose the size, let's look at the Bitcoin blockchain. As of September 2020 its size is 340GB including the transaction index. If you want to have some margin available for future growth or to install other data on your node, purchase at least a 512GB drive or better yet a 1TB drive.
=== Using an installer or helper
Installing a Lightning node or a Bitcoin node may be daunting if you are not familiar with a command-line environment. Luckily, there are a number of projects that make "helpers", i.e. software that installs and configures the various components for you. You will still need to learn some command-line incantations to interact with your node, but most of the initial work is done for you.
==== RaspiBlitz
One of the most popular and complete "helper" is _RaspiBlitz_, a project built by Christian Rootzoll. It is intended to be installed on a Raspberry Pi 4. RaspiBlitz comes with a recommended hardware "kit" that you can build in a matter of hours or at most a weekend. If you attend a Lightning "hackathon" in your city, you are likely to see many people working on their RaspiBlitz setup, swapping tips, and helping each other. You can find the RaspiBlitz project here:
https://github.com/rootzoll/raspiblitz
image::[images/raspiblitz.jpg]
In addition to a Bitcoin and Lightning node, RaspiBlitz can install a number of additional services, such as:
* TOR (Run as Hidden Service)
* ElectRS (Electrum Server in Rust)
* BTCPayServer (Cryptocurrency Payment Processor)
* BTC-RPC-Explorer (Bitcoin Blockchain Explorer)
* LNbits (Lightning wallet/accounts System)
* SpecterDesktop (Multisig Trezor, Ledger, Coldcard Wallet & Specter-DIY)
* LNDmanage (Advanced Channel Management CLI)
* Loop (Submarine Swaps Service)
* JoinMarket (CoinJoin Service)
==== MyNode
_MyNode_ is another popular open source "helper" project including a lot of Bitcoin related software. Is is easy to install: you "flash" the installer onto an SD card and boot your mini-PC from the SD card. You do not need any monitor to use myNode as the administrative tools are accessible remotely from a browser. If your mini-PC has no monitor, mouse, or keyboard, you can manage it from another computer or even from your smartphone. Once installed, go to http://mynode.local/ and create a Lightning wallet and node in two clicks.
You can find the MyNode project here:
https://mynodebtc.com/
In addition to a Bitcoin and Lightning node, MyNode can optionally install a variety of additional services, such as:
- Ride The Lightning (Lightning Node Management GUI)
- VPN Support for remote management or wallet (OpenVPN)
- lndmanage (CLI management tool)
- btc-rpc-explorer (A Bitcoin blockchain explorer)
==== BTCPay Server
While not initially designed as an installation "helper", the e-commerce and payment platform _BTCPay Server_ has an incredibly easy installation system that uses docker containers and +docker-compose+ to install a Bitcoin node, Lightning node, and payment gateway, among many other services. It can be installed on a variety of hardware platforms, from a simple Raspberry Pi 4 (4GB recommended) to a mini-PC, old laptop, desktop or server.
BTCPay Server is a fully-featured self-hosted self-custody e-commerce platform that can be integrated with many e-commerce platforms such as Wordpress Woocommerce and others. The installation of the full node is only a step of the e-commerce platform installation.
While originally developed as a feature-for-feature replacement of the _Bitpay_ commercial payment service and API, it has evolved past that to be a complete platform for BTC and Lighting services related to e-commerce. For many sellers or shops it is a one-shop turn-key solution to e-commerce.
More information can be found at:
https://btcpayserver.org/
In addition to a Bitcoin and Lightning node, BTCPay Server can also install a variety of services, including:
- c-Lightning or LND Lightning node
- Litecoin support
- Monero support
- Spark server (c-lightning web wallet)
- Charge server (c-lightning e-commerce API)
- Ride The Lightning (Lightning node management web GUI)
- Many BTC forks
- BTCTransmuter (event-action automation service supporting currency exchange)
The number of additional services and features is growing rapidly, so the list above is only a small subset of what is available on the BTCPay Server platform.
==== Bitcoin node or lightweight Lightning
One critical choice for your setup will be the choice of the Bitcoin node and its configuration. _Bitcoin Core_, the reference implementation, is the most common choice but not the only choice available. One alternative choice is _btcd_, which is a Go-language implementation of a Bitcoin node. Btcd supports some features that are useful for running an LND Lightning node and are not available in Bitcoin Core.
A second consideration is whether you will run an _archival_ Bitcoin node with a full copy of the blockchain (some 350GB in mid-2020) or a _pruned_ blockchain that only keeps the most recent blocks. A pruned blockchain can save you some disk space but will still need to download the full blockchain at least once (during the Initial Block Download). Hence it won't save you any network traffic. Using a pruned node to run a Lightning node is still an experimental capability and might not support all the functionality. However, many people are running a node like that successfully.
Finally, you also have the option of not running a Bitcoin node at all. Instead you can operate the LND Lightning node in "lightweight" mode, using the _neutrino_ protocol to retrieve blockchain information from public Bitcoin nodes operated by others. Running like this means that you are taking resources from the Bitcoin network without offering any in return. Instead, you are offering your resources and contributing to the Lightning Network community. For smaller Lightning nodes this will generally reduce network traffic in comparison to running a full Bitcoin node.
Keep in mind that operating a Bitcoin node allows you to support other services, besides and on top of a Lightning node. These other services may require an archival (not pruned) Bitcoin node and often can't run without a Bitcoin node. Consider upfront what other services you may want to run now or in the future, to make an informed decision on the type of Bitcoin node you select.
The bottom line for this decision is: If you can afford a disk larger than 500GB, run a full archival Bitcoin node. You will be contributing resources to the Bitcoin system and helping others who cannot afford to do so. If you can't afford such a big disk, run a pruned node. If you can't afford the disk or the bandwidth for even a pruned node, run a lightweight LND node over neutrino.
==== Operating system choice
The next step is to select an operating system for your nodes. The vast majority of internet servers run on some variant of Linux. Linux is the platform of choice for the internet because it is a powerful, open-source operating system. Linux, however, has a steep learning curve and requires familiarity with a command-line environment. It is often intimidating for new users.
Ultimately, most of the services can be run on any modern POSIX operating system, which includes Mac OS, Windows, and of course Linux. Your choice should be driven more by your familiarity and comfort with an operating system and your learning objectives. If you want to expand your knowledge and learn how to operate a Linux system, this is a great opportunity to do so with a specific project and a clear goal. If you just want to get a node up and running, go with what you know.
Nowadays, many services are also delivered in the form of containers, usually based on the _Docker_ system. These containers can be deployed on a variety of operating systems, abstracting the underlying OS. You may need to learn some Linux CLI commands nonetheless, as most of the containers run some variant of Linux inside.
=== Choose your Lightning node implementation
As with the choice of operating system, your choice of Lightning node implementation should depend primarily on your familiarity with the programming language and development tools used by the projects. While there are some small differences in features between the various node implementations, those are relatively minor and most implementations converge on the common standards defined by the BOLTs.
Familiarity with the programming language and build system, on the other hand, is a good basis for choosing a node. That's because installation, configuration, ongoing maintenance, and troubleshooting will all involve interacting with the various tools used by the build system. This includes:
* make, autotools, and GNU utilities for c-lightning
* go utilities for LND
* Java/Maven for Eclair
The programming language doesn't just influence the choice of build system but also many other aspects of the program. Each programming language comes with a whole design philosophy and affects many other aspects, such as:
* Format and syntax of configuration files
* File locations (in the filesystem)
* Command-line arguments and their syntax
* Error message formatting
* Prerequisite libraries
* Remote Procedure Call interfaces
When you choose your Lightning node, you are also choosing all of the above characteristics. So your familiarity with these tools and design philosophies will make it easier to run a node. Or harder, if you land in an unfamiliar domain.
On the other hand, if this is your first foray into the command-line and server/service environment, you will find yourself unfamiliar with any implementation and have the opportunity to learn something completely new. In that case you might want to decide based on a number of other factors, such as:
* Quality of support forums and chat rooms
* Quality of documentation
* Degree of integration with other tools you want to run
As a final consideration, you may want to examine the performance and reliability of different node implementations. This is especially important if you will be using this node in a production environment and expect heavy traffic and high reliability requirements. This might be the case if you plan to run the payment system of a shop on it.
=== Installing a Bitcoin or Lightning node
You decided not to use an installation "helper" and instead to dive into the command-line of a Linux operating system? That is a brave decision and we'll try to help you make it work. If you'd rather not try to do this manually, consider using an application that helps you install the node software or a container based solution, as described in <<helpers>>.
[WARNING]
====
This section will delve into the advanced topic of system administration from the command-line. You will need to do additional research and learn more skills not covered here. Linux administration is a complicated topic and there are many pitfalls. Proceed with caution!
====
In the next few sections we will briefly describe how to install and configure a Bitcoin and Lightning node on a Linux operating system. You will need to review the installation instructions for the specific Bitcoin and Lightning node applications you decided to use. You can usually find these in a file called +INSTALL+ or in the +docs+ sub-directory of each project. We will only describe some of the common steps that apply to all such services, and the instructions we offer will be necessarily incomplete.
==== Background services
For those accustomed to running applications on their desktop or smartphone, an application always has a graphical user interface even if it may sometimes run in the background. The Bitcoin and Lightning node applications, however, are very different. These applications do not have a graphical user interface built in. Instead, they run as _headless_ background services, meaning they are always operating in the background and do not interact with the user directly.
This can create some confusion for users who are not used to running background services. How do you know if such a service is currently running? How do you start and stop it? How do you interact with it? The answers to these questions depend on the operating system you are using, but for now we will assume you are using some Linux variant and answer them in that context.
==== Process isolation
Background services usually run under a specific user account in order to isolate them from the operating system and each other. For example, Bitcoin Core is configured to run as user +bitcoin+. You will need to use the command-line to create a user for each of the services you run.
In addition, if you have connected an external drive, you will need to tell the operating system to relocate the user's home directory to that drive. That's because a service like Bitcoin Core will create files under the user's home directory. If you are setting it up to download the full Bitcoin blockchain, these files will take up several hundred GB. Here, we assume you have connected the external drive and it is located on the +/external_drive/+ path of the operating system.
On most Linux systems you can create a new user with the +useradd+ command, like this:
----
$ sudo useradd -d /external_drive/bitcoin -s /dev/null bitcoin
----
The +d+ flag assigns the user's home directory. In this case, we put it on the external drive. The +s+ flag assigns the user's interactive shell. In this case we set it to +/dev/null+ to disable interactive shell use. The last argument is the new user's username +bitcoin+.
==== Node startup
For both Bitcoin and Lightning node services, "installation" also involves creating a so called _startup script_ to make sure that the node starts when the computer boots. Startup and shutdown of background services is handled by an operating system process, which in Linux is called _init_ or _systemd_. You can usually find a system startup script in the +contrib+ sub-directory of each project. For example, if you are on a modern Linux OS that uses +systemd+, you would find a script called +bitcoind.service+, that can start the Bitcoin Core node service.
Here's an example (from the Bitcoin Core code repository) of what a Bitcoin node's startup script looks like:
.From bitcoin/contrib/init/bitcoind.service
----
[Unit]
Description=Bitcoin daemon
After=network.target
[Service]
ExecStart=/usr/bin/bitcoind -daemon \
-pid=/run/bitcoind/bitcoind.pid \
-conf=/etc/bitcoin/bitcoin.conf \
-datadir=/var/lib/bitcoind
# Make sure the config directory is readable by the service user
PermissionsStartOnly=true
ExecStartPre=/bin/chgrp bitcoin /etc/bitcoin
# Process management
####################
Type=forking
PIDFile=/run/bitcoind/bitcoind.pid
Restart=on-failure
TimeoutStopSec=600
# Directory creation and permissions
####################################
# Run as bitcoin:bitcoin
User=bitcoin
Group=bitcoin
# /run/bitcoind
RuntimeDirectory=bitcoind
RuntimeDirectoryMode=0710
# /etc/bitcoin
ConfigurationDirectory=bitcoin
ConfigurationDirectoryMode=0710
# /var/lib/bitcoind
StateDirectory=bitcoind
StateDirectoryMode=0710
[...]
[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
----
As the root user, install the script by copying it into the +systemd+ service folder +/lib/systemd/system/+ and then reload +systemd+:
----
$ sudo systemctl daemon-reload
----
Next, enable the service:
----
$ sudo systemctl enable bitcoind
----
You can now start and stop the service (don't do this yet, as we haven't configured the Bitcoin node):
----
$ sudo systemctl start bitcoind
$ sudo systemctl stop bitcoind
----
==== Node configuration
To configure your node, you need to create and reference a configuration file. By convention, this file is usually created in +/etc+, under a directory with the name of the program. For example, Bitcoin Core and LND configurations would usually be stored in:
+/etc/bitcoin/bitcoin.conf+
+/etc/lnd/lnd.conf+
These configuration files are text files with each line expressing one configuration option and its value. Default values are assumed for anything not defined in the configuration file. You can see what options can be set in the configuration in two ways. First, running the node application with a +help+ argument will show the options that can be defined on the command-line. These same options can be defined in the configuration file. Second, you can usually find an example configuration file, with all the default options, in the code repository of the software.
You can see one example of a configuration file in each of the docker images we saw in <<set_up_a_lightning_node>>. For example, the file +code/docker/bitcoind/bitcoind/bitcoin.conf+:
.Configuration file for docker bitcoind (code/docker/bitcoind/bitcoind/bitcoin.conf)
----
include::code/docker/bitcoind/bitcoind/bitcoin.conf[]
----
That particular configuration file configures Bitcoin Core for operation as a +regtest+ node and provides a weak username and password for remote access, so you shouldn't use it for your node configuration. However, it serves to illustrate the syntax of a configuration file and you can make adjustments to it in the docker container to experiment with different options. See if you can use the +bitcoind -help+ command to understand what each of the options does in the context of the docker network we build in <<set_up_a_lightning_node>>
Often, the defaults suffice and with a few modifications, your node software can be configured quickly. To get a Bitcoin Core node running for example, you only need four lines of configuration:
----
server=1
daemon=1
txindex=1
rpcuser=USERNAME
rpcpassword=PASSWORD
----
Even the +txindex+ option is not strictly necessary, though it will ensure your Bitcoin node creates an index of all transactions, which is required for some applications. The +txindex+ option is not required to run a Lightning node.
A c-lightning Lightning node running on the same server also only requires a few lines in the configuration:
----
network=mainnet
bitcoin-rpcuser=USERNAME
bitcoin-rpcpassword=PASSWORD
----
In general, it is a good idea to minimize the amount of customization of these systems. The default configuration is carefully designed to support the most common deployments. If you modify a default value, it may cause problems later on, or reduce the performance of your node. So, modify only when necessary!
==== Network configuration
Network configuration is normally not an issue when configuring a new application. However, peer-to-peer networks like Bitcoin and the Lightning network present some unique challenges for network configuration.
In a centralized service, your computer connects to the "big servers" of some corporation, and not vice-versa. Your home Internet connection is actually configured on the assumption that you are simply a consumer of services provided by others. But in a peer-to-peer system, every peer both consumes from and provides services to other nodes. If you're running a Bitcoin or Lightning node at your home, you are providing a service to other computers on the internet. Your internet service is not configured to allow you to run servers and may need some additional configuration to work.
If you want to run a Bitcoin or Lightning node, you need to make it possible for other nodes on the internet to connect to you. That means enabling incoming TCP connections to the Bitcoin port (port 8333 by default), or Lightning port (port 9735 by default). While you can run a Bitcoin node without incoming connectivity, you can't do that with a Lightning node - it needs to be accessible from outside your network.
By default, your home internet router does not expect incoming connections from the outside, and in fact incoming connections are blocked. Your internet router IP address is the only externally accessible IP address, and all the computers you run inside your home network use that single IP address. This is achieved by a mechanism called _Network Address Translation (NAT)_ which allows your internet router to act as an intermediary for all outbound connections. If you want to allow an inbound connection you have to set up _Port Forwarding_, which tells your internet router that incoming connections on specific ports should be forwarded to specific computers inside the network. You can do this manually by changing your internet router configuration, or through an automatic port forwarding mechanism called called Universal Plug and Play (UPNP) if your router supports it.
An alternative mechanism to port forwarding s is to enable The Onion Router (TOR), which provides a kind of virtual private network overlay that allows incoming connections to an _onion address_. If you run TOR, you don't need to do port forwarding.
Let's look at different ways you can make it possible for others to connect to your node. We'll look at these mechanisms in order from easiest to most difficult.
===== It just works!
There's a possibility that your internet service provider is configured to support UPNP by default and everything just works automatically. Let's try this approach first, just in case we are lucky.
Assuming you already have a Bitcoin or Lightning node running, we will try and see if they are accessible from the outside.
[NOTE]
====
For this test to work, you have to have either a Bitcoin or Lightning node (or both) up and running on your home network. If your router supports UPNP, the node services will automatically use it to forward incoming connections to the corresponding ports on the computer running the node.
====
You can use some very popular and useful websites to find out what is your external IP address and whether it allows and forwards incoming connections to a known port. Here are two that are reliable:
https://canyouseeme.org/
https://www.whatismyip.com/port-scanner/
By default, these services only allow you to check incoming connections to the IP address from which you are connecting - this prevents you from using the service to scan other people's networks and computers. You will see your router's external IP address and a field for entering a port number. If you haven't changed the default ports on your node configuration, try port 8333 (Bitcoin) and/or 9735 (Lightning).
[[ln_port_check]]
. Checking for incoming port 9735
image::images/ln_port_check.png[]
In <<ln_port_check>> you can see the result of checking port 9735 on a server running Lightning, using the +whatismyip.org+ port scanner tool. It shows that the server is accepting incoming connections to the Lightning port. If you see a result like this, you are all set!
===== Automatic port forwarding using UPNP
Sometimes, even if your internet router supports UPNP, it may be turned off by default. In that case you need to change your internet router configuration from its web administration interface:
. Connect to your internet router's configuration website. Usually this can be done by connecting to the _gateway address_ of your home network using a web browser. You can find the gateway address by looking at the IP configuration of any computer on your home network. It is often the first address in one of the non-routable networks, like 192.168.0.1, or 10.0.0.1.
. Find the administrator username and password for the web configuration panel of the router. This is often written on a sticker on the router itself and may be as simple as "admin" and "password". A quick web search for your ISP and router model can also help you find this information
. Find a setting for UPNP and turn it on.
Restart your Bitcoin and/or Lighting node and repeat the open port test with one of the websites we used in the previous section.
===== Using TOR for incoming connections
The Onion Router (TOR) is a virtual private network with the special property that it encrypts communications between hops, such that any intermediary node cannot determine the origin or destination of a packet. Both Bitcoin and Lightning nodes support operation over TOR, which enables you to operate a node without revealing your IP address or location. An added benefit of running TOR is that because it operates as a VPN, it resolves the problem of port forwarding from your internet router. Incoming connections are received over the TOR tunnel, and your node can be found through an _onion address_ instead of an IP address.
Enabling TOR requires two steps: First you must install the TOR router and proxy on your computer. Second, you must enable the use of the TOR proxy in your Bitcoin or Lightning configuration.
To install TOR on a Ubuntu Linux system that uses the +apt+ package manager, run:
----
sudo apt install tor
----
Next, we configure our Lightning node to use TOR for it's external address. Here's an example configuration if we're running LND:
----
[Tor]
tor.active=true
tor.v3=true
tor.streamisolation=true
listen=localhost
----
This will enable TOR (+tor.active+), establish a v3 onion service (+tor.v3=true+), use a different onion stream for each connection (+tor.streamisolation+) and restrict listening for connections to the local host only, to avoid leaking your IP address (+listen=localhost+).
Due to the nature of TOR, you can't use an external service to check if your node is reachable via an onion address. You should see your TOR onion address in the logs of your Lightning node, as a long string of letters and numbers followed by the suffix +.onion+. Your node should now be reachable from the internet, with the added bonus of privacy!
===== Manual port forwarding
This is the most complex process and requires quite a bit of technical skill. The details depend on the type of internet router you have, your service provider settings and policies and a lot of other context. Try UPNP or TOR first, before you try this much more difficult mechanism.
But the basic steps are as follows:
. Find the IP address of the computer your node is on. This is usually dynamically allocated by the Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) and is often somewhere in the 192.168.0.X or 10.0.0.X range.
. Find the Media Access Control (MAC) address of your node's network interface. This can be found in the internet settings of that computer.
. Assign a static IP address for your node so that it is always the same one. You can use the IP address it currently has. On your internet router, look for "Static Leases" under the DHCP configuraiton. Map the MAC address to the specific IP address you want. Now your node will always have that IP address allocated to it.
. Finally, set up "Port Forwarding" on your internet router.
Now, repeat the port check using one of the websites from the previous sections.
=== Security of your node
A Lightning node is, by definition, a hot-wallet. That means that the funds (both on-chain and off-chain) controlled by a Lightning node are directly controlled by keys that are loaded in the node's memory. If a Lightning node is compromised, it is trivial to create on-chain or off-chain transactions to drain its funds. It is therefore critically important that you protect it from unauthorized access.
Security is a holistic effort, meaning that you have to secure every layer of a system. As the saying goes: the chain is only as strong as the weakest link. This is an important concept in information security and we will apply it to our node.
Despite all security measures you will take, remember that the Lightning Network is an early-stage experimental technology and there are likely to be exploitable bugs in the code of any project you use. *Do not put more money than you are willing to risk losing on the Lightning Network.*
==== Operating system security
Securing an operating system is a vast topic that is beyond the scope of this book. However, we can establish some basics concepts at a high level.
To secure your operating system, here are some of the top items to consider:
. Provenance - Start by ensuring that you are downloading the correct operating system image and verify any signatures or checksums before installing it.
. Maintenance - Make sure that you keep your operating system up to date. Enable automated daily or weekly installation of security updates.
. Least Privilege - Set up users for specific processes and give them the least access needed to run a service. Do not run processes with admin privileges (e.g. root).
. Process Isolation - Use the operating system features to isolate processes from each other.
. File System Permissions - Configure the file system carefully, on the least-privilege principle. Do not make files readable or writeable by everyone.
. Strong Authentication - Use strong randomly generated passwords, or whenever possible public-key authentication e.g. with Secure Shell (SSH) instead of passwords.
. Two-factor Authentication (2FA) - Use two-factor authentication wherever possible, including Universal 2-Factor (U2F) with hardware security keys.
. Backup - Make backups of your system, but make sure you protect the backups with encryption too.
. Vulnerability & Exposure Management - Use remote scanning to ensure you have minimized the attack surface of your system. Close any unnecessary services or ports.
This is a list of basic security measures, not an exhaustive list.
==== Node Access
Your Lightning node will expose a Remote Procedure Call (RPC) Application Programming Interface (API). This means that your node can be controlled by commands sent to a specific TCP port. Control of that RPC API is achieved by some form of user authentication. Depending on the type of Lightning node you set up, this will either be done by username/password authentication, or by a mechanism called an authentication _macaroon_. A macaroon is a more sophisticated type of cookie, as the name implies. Unlike a cookie, it is cryptographically signed and can express a set of access capabilities.
For example, LND uses macaroons to grant access to the RPC API. By default the LND software creates three macaroons with different levels of access, called +admin+, +invoice+ and +readonly+. Depending on which macaroon you copy and use in your RPC client, you either have "readonly" access, "invoice" access (which includes the "readonly" capabilities), or "admin" access which gives you full control. There's also a macaroon "bakery" function in LND that can construct macaroons with any combination of capabilities with very fine-grained control.
If you use a username/password authentication model, make sure you select a long and random password. You will not have to type this password often as it will be stored in the configuration files. You can therefore pick one that cannot be guessed. Many of the examples you will see include poorly chosen passwords and often people copy these into their own systems, giving an easy backdoor to anyone. Don't do that. Use a password manager to generate a random alpha-numeric password. Since certain special characters can interfere with the command line (e.g. $/!*\&%), it is best to avoid them for passwords that will be used in a shell environment and may end up being passed as command-line parameters.
A plain alphanumeric sequence that is longer than 12 characters and randomly generated is usually sufficient. If you plan to store large amount of money on your Lightning node and are concerned about remote brute-force attacks, select a length of more than 20 characters that makes such attacks practically infeasible.
=== Node and channel backups
A very important consideration when running a Lightning node is the issue of backups. Unlike a Bitcoin wallet, where a BIP39 mnemonic phrase can recover all the state of the wallet, in Lightning this is not sufficient.
Lightning wallets do use a BIP39 mnemonic phrase backup for the on-chain wallet. However, due to the way channels are constructed, the mnemonic phrase is not sufficient to restore a Lightning node. An additional layer of backup is needed, which is called the _Static Channel Backup (SCB)_. Without a SCB, a Lightning node operator may lose all the funds that are in channels if they lose the Lightning node data store.
[WARNING]
====
Do not fund channels until you have created a system to continuously backup your channel state. Your backups should be moved "offsite" to a different system and location from your node, so that they can survive a variety of system failures (power loss, data corruption etc.) or natural disasters (flood, fire etc.)
====
Static Channel Backups are not a panacea. First, the state of each channel needs to be backed up every time there is a new commitment transaction. Second, restoring from a channel backup is dangerous. If you do not have the _last_ commitment transaction and you accidentally broadcast an old (revoked) commitment, your channel peer will assume you are trying to cheat and take the entire channel balance with a penalty transaction. To make sure you are closing the channel, you need to do a cooperative close. But a malicious peer could mislead your node into broadcasting an old commitment during that cooperative close, thereby cheating you by making your node inadvertently try to "cheat".
Additionally, the backups of your channels need to be encrypted to maintain your privacy and your channel security. Otherwise, anyone who finds the backups can not only see all your channels, they could use the backups to close all your channels in a way that hands over the balance to your channel peers.
SCB are therefore a weak compromise because they swap one type of risk (data corruption or loss) for another type of risk (malicious peer). To restore from a static channel backup, you have to interact with your channel peers and hope they don't try to cheat (either by giving you an old commitment, or by fooling your node into broadcasting a revoked commitment so they can penalize you). Ultimately, this is less of a risk than the risk of losing all funds committed to a channel because of data corruption. Since data corruption leads to the same outcome as if every one of your peers cheat, you are better off backing up and taking the chance that some of your peers will act honestly.
Channel backup mechanisms are still a work-in-progress and a weakness in most Lightning implementations.
==== Static Channel Backups (SCB)
At the time of writing this book, only LND offers a built-in mechanism for channel backups. Eclair has no backup on the server side, although Eclair mobile does offer optional backup to a Google Drive. C-lightning recently merged the necessary interfaces for a plugin to implement channel backups, but there is no agreed on backup mechanism.
File-based backups of the Lightning node databases are partial solution, but you run the risk of data corruption because those backups may not reliably catch the latest state commitments. It is much better to have a backup mechanism that is triggered every time there is a state change in a channel, ensuring data consistency.
To set up static channel backups in LND, set the +backupfilepath+ parameter, either on the command-line or in the configuration file. LND will then save an SCB file in that directory path. Of course, that's only part of the solution. Now, you have to setup a mechanism that copies that file off-site each time it changes, which is beyond the scope of this book. Any sophisticated backup solution should be able to handle this.
==== Hot wallet risk
As we've discussed previously, the Lightning Network consists of a network of _hot wallets_. The funds you store in a Lightning wallet are *online all the time*. You should not store large amounts in a Lightning wallet, as it is quite vulnerable. Large amounts should be kept in a cold wallet that is not online and transacts on-chain.
But given that warning, you may still find you have a significant amount of money in a Lightning wallet. Such is the case for example if you use a Lightning node for e-commerce operations like running a shop, while not having significant expenses you can pay on Lightning. If that is the case, your wallet will likely receive funds often but send funds rarely. You will therefore have two problems simultaneously: Your channels will be imbalanced inwards (more local balance than remote balance) and you will have too much money in the wallet. Fortunately, you can solve both of these problems simultaneously.
Let's look at some of the solutions you can use to reduce the funds exposed on a hot wallet.
==== Sweeping funds
If you Lightning wallet balance becomes too large for your risk appetite, you will need to "sweep" funds out of the wallet. You can do so in three ways: on-chain, off-chain, and loop-out. Let's look at each of those in the next few sections.
===== On-chain sweep
Sweeping funds on-chain, is accomplished moving the funds from the Lightning wallet to a Bitcoin wallet (presumably a more secure hardware wallet or cold storage). You do that by closing channels. When you close a channel, all funds from your local balance are "swept" to a Bitcoin address. The Bitcoin address for on-chain funds is usually generated by your Lightning wallet so it is still a hot-wallet. You may need to do an additional transaction to move the funds to a more secure address, such as one generated on your hardware wallet.
Closing channels will incur an on-chain fee and will reduce your Lightning node's capacity and connectivity. However, if you run a popular e-commerce node you will not lack incoming capacity and can strategically close channels with large local balances, essentially "batching" your funds for movement on-chain. You may need to use some channel re-balancing techniques (see <<channel_rebalancing>>) before you close channels to maximize the benefit of this strategy.
===== Off-chain sweep
Another technique you can use involves running a second Lightning node that is not advertised on the network. You can establish large capacity channels from your public node (e.g. the one running you shop) to your less-public (hidden) node. On a regular basis, "sweep" funds by making a Lightning payment to your hidden node.
The avantage of this technique lies in the fact that the Lightning node that receives payments for your shop will be publicly known. This makes it a target for hackers, as any Lightning node associated with a shop would be assumed to have large amounts of money in its balance. A second node that is not associated with your shop will not easily be identified as a valuable target.
As an additional measure of security, you can make your second node a hidden TOR service, so that it's IP address is not known. That further reduces the opportunity for attack and increases your privacy.
You will need to setup a script that runs at regular intervals that creates an invoice on your hidden node and then pays that invoice from your shop node, thereby shifting the funds over to your hidden node.
Keep in mind that this technique does not move funds into cold storage. Both Lightning nodes are hot wallets. The effect of this is to move funds from a very well known hot wallet to an obscure hot wallet.
===== Submarine swap sweep
Another way to reduce your Lightning hot-wallet balance is to use a technique called a _submarine swap_. Submarine swaps, conceptualized by co-author Olaoluwa Osuntokun and Alex Bosworth, allow on-chain Bitcoin to be exchanged for Lightning payments and vice versa.
A node operator can initiate a submarine swap and send all available channel balance to the other party, who will then send them on-chain Bitcoin in exchange.
In the future this could be a paid service offered by nodes on the Lightning Network who advertise exchange rates or charge a flat fee for the conversion.
The advantage of a submarine swap for sweeping funds is that we do not close a channel. That means that we preserve our channel capacity and re-balance our channels through this operation. As we send a Lightning payment out, we shift balance from local to remote on one or more of our channels. Not only does that reduce the balance exposed in our node's hot wallet, it also increases the balance available for future incoming payments.
Now, you could do this by trusting the intermediary to act as a gateway for your funds and not steal them. But in the case of a submarine swap, the operation does not require trust. Submarine swaps are non-custodial _atomic_ operations. That means that the intermediary cannot steal your funds, because the on-chain payment depends on the completion of the off-chain payment and vice-versa. We will discuss submarine swaps in more detail in <<submarine_swaps>>.
===== Submarine swaps with Loop
One example of a submarine swap service is _Loop_ by Lightning Labs, the company that builds the LND Lightning node. Loop comes in two variations: _Loop In_, which accepts a Bitcoin on-chain payment and converts it into a Lightning off-chain payment and _Loop Out_, which converts a Lightning payment to a Bitcoin payment.
[NOTE]
====
To use Loop, you must be running an LND Lightning node.
====
For the purpose of reducing the balance of our Lightning hot wallet, we would use the Loop Out service. To use the Loop service, we need to install some additional software on our node. The Loop software runs alongside your LND node and provides some command-line tools to execute submarine swaps. You can find the Loop software and installation instructions here:
https://github.com/lightninglabs/loop
Once you have the software installed and running, a Loop-Out operation is as simple as running a single command:
----
loop out --amt 501000 --conf_target 400
Max swap fees for 501000 sat Loop Out: 25716 sat
Regular swap speed requested, it might take up to 30m0s for the swap to be executed.
CONTINUE SWAP? (y/n), expand fee detail (x): x
Estimated on-chain sweep fee: 149 sat
Max on-chain sweep fee: 14900 sat
Max off-chain swap routing fee: 10030 sat
Max no show penalty (prepay): 1337 sat
Max off-chain prepay routing fee: 36 sat
Max swap fee: 750 sat
CONTINUE SWAP? (y/n): y
Swap initiated
Run `loop monitor` to monitor progress.
----
Note that your maximum fee, which represents a worst-case scenario, will depend on the confirmation target that you select.
=== Lightning node uptime and availability
Unlike Bitcoin, Lightning nodes need to be online almost continuously. Your node needs to be online to receive payments, open channels, close channels (cooperatively) and monitor protocol violations. Node availability is such an important requirement in the Lightning Network, that it is a metric used by various automatic channel management tools (e.g. autopilot) to decide with which nodes to open channels. You can even see "availability" as a node metric on popular node explorers such as +1ml.com+.
Node availability is especially important because of potential protocol violations (i.e. revoked commitments). While you can afford short interruptions (hour or days), you cannot have your node offline for longer periods of time without risking loss of funds.
Keeping a node online is not easy, as various bugs and resource limitations will occasionally cause downtime. Especially if you run a busy and popular node, you will run into limitations of memory, swap space, number of open files, disk space etc. A whole host of different problems will cause your node or your server to crash.
==== Monitoring node availability
Monitoring your node is an important part of keeping it running. You need to monitor not only the availability of the computer itself, but also the availability and correct operation of the Lightning node software.
There are a number of ways to do this, but most require some customization. You can use generic infrastructure monitoring or application monitoring tools, but you have to customize them specifically to query the Lightning node API, to ensure it is running, synchronized to the blockchain and connected to channel peers.
There is a specialized service that offers Lightning node monitoring, using a Telegram bot to notify you of any interruptions in service. This is a free service, though you can pay (over Lightning of course) to get faster alerts. Find more information at:
https://lightning.watch
Over time, we expect more third-party services to provide specialized Lightning node monitoring, most likely charging a micro-payment. Perhaps such services and their APIs will become standardized and be directly supported by Lightning node software.
==== Watchtowers
Watchtowers are a mechanism for outsourcing the monitoring and penalty resolution of Lightning protocol violations.
As we mentioned in previous chapters, the Lightning protocol maintains security through a penalty mechanism. If one of your channel partners broadcasts an old commitment transaction, your node will need to exercise the revocation clause and broadcast a penalty transaction to avoid losing money. But if your node is down during the protocol violation, you might lose money.
To solve this problem, we can use one or more _watchtowers_ to outsource the job of monitoring protocol violations and issuing penalty transactions. There are two parts to a watchtower setup: a watchtower server (or simply "watchtower") that monitors the blockchain and a watchtower client that asks the watchtower server for monitoring service.
Watchtower technology, is still in the early stages of development and is not widely supported. However there are some experimental implementations that you can try, below.
LND can run both a watchtower server and a watchtower client. You can activate the watchtower server by adding the following configuration options:
----
[watchtower]
watchtower.active=1
watchtower.towerdir=/path_to_watchtower_data_directory
----
You can use LND's watchtower client by activating it in the configuration and then using the command-line to connect it to a watchtower server. The configuration is:
----
[wtclient]
wtclient.active=1
----
LND's command-line client +lncli+ shows the following options for managing the watchtower client:
----
$ lncli wtclient
NAME:
lncli wtclient - Interact with the watchtower client.
USAGE:
lncli wtclient command [command options] [arguments...]
COMMANDS:
add Register a watchtower to use for future sessions/backups.
remove Remove a watchtower to prevent its use for future sessions/backups.
towers Display information about all registered watchtowers.
tower Display information about a specific registered watchtower.
stats Display the session stats of the watchtower client.
policy Display the active watchtower client policy configuration.
OPTIONS:
--help, -h show help
----
C-lightning has the API hooks necessary for a watchtower client plugin, though no such plugin has been implemented yet.
Finally, a popular standalone watchtower server is The Eye of Satoshi (TEOS), which can be found here:
https://github.com/talaia-labs/python-teos
=== Channel management
==== Manually choosing nodes for outbound channels
==== Autopilot
==== Getting inbound liquidity
In the current design of the Lightning Network, it is more typical for users to obtain outbound liquidity _before_ obtaining inbound liquidity.
They will do so by opening a channel with another node, and more often they'll be able to spend Bitcoin before they can receive it.
There are three typical ways of getting inbound liquidity:
* Open a channel with outbound liquidity, and then spend some of that Bitcoin
* Request that someone else opens a channel with you, into which they load outbound liquidity from their side
* Pay a third party service to open a channel with you. For example, ACINQ offers this feature in Eclair Mobile Wallet and Bitrefill offers an inbound liquidity service called Thor
This can sometimes create bottlenecks for earners on the Lightning Network.
For example, merchants who sell goods for Lightning BTC could have a busy day and exhaust their inbound capacity, and then find themselves unable to receive more payments.
Furthermore this is unintuitive from a UX perspective.
Users typically expect to receive funds *before* they spend them, and not the other way around.
In the future these challenges can be partially mitigated by the implementation of dual-funded channels, which are funded from both sides and offer both inbound and outbound capacity.
This could also be mitigated by autopilot, which could request and pay for inbound capacity as needed.
Ultimately, however, Lightning power users will have to strategize about channel management to ensure that sufficient inbound capacity is available to meet their inbound liquidity needs.
==== On-chain fees for channel management
==== Inactive channels and nodes
==== When to force-close
As discussed earlier in the book, Mutual Close is the preferred way of closing a channel, however there are instances where a Force Close is neccessary.
Some examples:
* Your channel partner is offline and cannot be contacted to initiate a mutual close
* Your channel partner is online, but is not responding to requests to initiate a mutual close
* Your channel partner is online, and your nodes are negotiating a mutual close, but they become stuck and cannot reach a resolution.
==== Re-balancing channels
In the course of transacting and routing other payments on Lightning, the combination of inbound and outbound capacity can become undesirable.
For example, the user could have two channels both with an inbound capacity of 0.05 BTC and an outbound capacity of 0.05 BTC.
While the total inbound capacity and outbound capacity are both 0.1 BTC,the user cannot send or receive payments greater than the capacity of a single channel i.e. 0.05 BTC.
In the future, this problem will be solved through the implementation of Atomic Multipath Payments (AMP), which will allow multiple channels to be involved in a single payment.
For now, there is a need to rebalance channels.
One of the methods rebalancing a channel is to "loop out".
A user can pay an invoice to itself of 0.05 BTC.
This payment will exit one of the channels, resulting in an inbound capacity of 0.1 BTC and an outbound capacity of 0, and enter the other channel, resulting in an inbound capacity of 0 and an outbound capacity of 0.1 BTC
(minus, of course, the routing fees that will need to be paid).
This can be repeated with an arbitrary number of channels until the required channel balances are obtained.
It could even be automated through autopilot.
=== Routing fees
* Earning fees from routing
* Setting routing fees
* High volume/low cost vs. High cost/low volume
* Zero fee routing
=== Node monitoring
==== RTL
Maintaining a Lightning node using the command-line can be a tedious task sometimes, fortunately we can use Ride The Lightning, most commonly known as RTL.
RTL is web graphical user interface to help users to manage lightning node operations for the three main lightning implementations (LND, c-lightning and Eclair), RTL is an open source project developed by Suheb, Shahana Farooqi and many other contributors. You can find the RTL software here:
https://github.com/Ride-The-Lightning/RTL
One of the advantages of RTL is that it can be run via a web interface.
it is implemented this way in MyNodeBTC and can be accessed using Google Chrome or Internet Explorer.
The advantage of this is that RTL can be used to operate the node remotely, such as by using a laptop or mobile phone.
==== lndash
==== External node monitors (1ml etc.)
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