Ok, I’m learning a lot and there is a lot to be learned. Here are a few additional tips for running a lightning node on a virtual server.
Tips
- I first tried core lightning but it didn’t seem to perform well with the pruned node. I decided to give another node software a try and I found that LND has sufficient support for running against a pruned node. So far so good with LND as my node software.
- There are other node software implementations. eclair for example is an alternate lightning implementation that is written using Scala. Not all lightning nodes can run against a pruned bitcoin node though so you have to research things a bit. But I mainly pointed this alternative out because I’ve also found it isn’t easy to switch. Channels are not portable between node software. Which brings me to…
- You can’t easily switch your backend. Even with LND, I started out using a pruned bitcoind as the backend. I thought about switching to neutrino as an alternative to a pruned backend but some research into this and I found the channels are not compatible. I’d have to completely close the channels, shut down the node and bring it back up with the new backend and re-open channels. Not really something you do unless just testing. So.. you might strongly look at neutrino before starting to run your node and open channels.
Software
lightning nodes have lots of front ends and tools available. A few I’ve found interesting:
- Ride the Lightning – management console for LND
- lnbits – Add multiple user/wallet support on top of your lightning node
- charge-lnd – Auto rebalance your channels
- loopd/loop, deezy.io, boltz – swap out lightning sats to on-chain wallets
- plebnet wiki – a ton of information for new lightning users.
