Topic: Help getting started with the lightining network (Read 206 times)

there goes all the fun... 

although you are probably right in this case

The struggle to solve with LN channels is to get enough receive capacity for your channel if you need that or in bodum's case for his friend's LN channel.
Your job is not done by only opening a Lightning channel, especially if you primarily want to receive funds with that channel.
Opening a LN channel just for one or two transactions doesn't make much sense either.

If you want to experiment and get to know Lightning, I'd recommend to use testnet and play around there.

If he still wants to experiment with LN, now would be a great moment to open channels. Transactions as low as 2 sat/byte are getting confirmed quickly at the moment.

It is still in early-stages, but it's feasible between two c-lightning nodes if they both enable it in their config. The official specification has not been finalized yet so I guess that's why it is not available in other implementations. It will also take some extra time for wallets to implement it.

I am currently waiting for DaveF to update his node and we are going to test it out. If you are interested in the results then keep a close eye on The Lightning Network FAQ thread.

It's great that you are willing to experiment with bitcoin and especially the Lightning Network, but you could have saved a lot on fees if you just performed a standard on-chain transaction. I know that you wrote in your 2nd post that you are doing this to learn something new, but it could have also been achieved by not throwing valuable satoshis down the drain.

You bought coins on an exchange and withdrew them to your private wallet (I assume). That's your first on-chain transaction.
You now have to send 0.001 BTC to your friend. That's your 2nd on-chain transaction.
Depending on what exchange you used, you could have sent the coins to your friend's exchange wallet P2P (for free) and have him send those coins to BlueWallet for example.

It's a good learning experience, but one that wouldn't have needed the LN and the multiple on-chain transactions + the LN routing fees because we are talking about just one transaction of 0.001 BTC to your friend. If you wanted to make it interesting, you could have played a double or nothing game with the total price being 0.002 BTC. For each bet you or your friend wins, a prize of the pool is moved via the LN to you or him. That way you could test it out with 10-20 or more off-chain transactions. That would have been a good use of the LN infrastructure.

Rath_ keeps track of LN development, is dual-funding of LN channels possible now?

Usually, such services are time-limited or will keep their channel open only if you use their channel frequently. Otherwise, there is no incentive for them to keep the channel open, especially if you are running a client which does not route payments.


That's actually a tough question! There's plenty of great wallets out there, but since most of them are designed for mobile devices, they don't really handle inbound channels well. I would have to do some thorough research to answer your question. I have been running a c-lightning node for quite some time now and it's great because I am not limited in any way, but such a setup would be unnecessarily complicated for you. Here's what I would suggest:

1) You can use whichever wallet you want while you friend uses BlueWallet to receive the payment without any extra steps.

2) You can both use Electrum and open a channel to some node (preferably the same one). Your friend can use the built-in swap functionality to exchange his off-chain coins to on-chain coins for a small fee. He will gain incoming capacity in his channel this way and he should be able to receive your payment.


I think the biggest disadvantage is that you can't route payments which should be obvious given that no one keeps Electrum open 24/7. You might also have a hard time getting an inbound channel to work. It won't be a good choice for your plan. You might find some useful information in my "Electrum Lightning Network walkthrough" thread.

Thanks for the answers! And also thanks for suggesting the easy way but.. hey! The whole point of this is experimenting and learning something new; if it was just about transferring funds, i could just send an on-chain transaction (about the exchange fees: i have already withdrawn the amount, paid a reasonable one).

I've seen there are some services who offer to open a channel back to you as long as you open one to them; maybe is there any who can open a channel to a 3rd party instead? Also, which software is best suited for this sort of transactions at the moment? I've had a look into Electrum but it looks like they only support a simplified subset of the lightning network features.

Just use Testnet to order a Blockaccino on Starblocks

For me, at first, I can't understand how the lightning network works I tried it before and confused I can't even receive bitcoins before from someone until someone said that it needs a small amount to open a channel.

So, if you just heard about lightning from a friend I suggest you do research first and learn how does it work.

I would suggest this link below as a source of learning about the lightning network.

- https://github.com/bcongdon/awesome-lightning-network#learning-resources

The link above also has a lightning network simulator I didn't test it yet but you can try and maybe you can practice there on how to make a channel and make a transaction.

Some thoughts on your plan: if you have to withdraw 0.003BTC from an exchange, they may charge up to 0.0005BTC in withdrawal fee. It might be possible to convert to an altcoin, withdraw that, go through FixedFloat and get Bitcoin LN there. If you do the math, you might be able to save more than 10% of your total amount.

After messing around with channels in the past, I now only use BlueWallet and Phoenix Wallet on mobile for LN. The former is custodial, the latter opens a channel for you and is only custodial during that process. Both have pros and cons, Phoenix got a bit more expensive recently for opening a channel.
In my experience, it's well worth the convenience of not having to deal with things like channel reserve and incoming capacity. As always: don't put in more than you're willing to lose.

Sounds good. However, each channel has to maintain a reserve (1-3% of the channel's total capacity) which is unspendable so both of you would have to have slightly larger channels.


It will be very difficult to have some large node open a channel to your friend. You might be better off using some custodial wallet like BlueWallet. This way, your friend won't have to bother with opening and maintaining his own channel - he will be able to receive your Lightning payment instantly. It won't be a "real" Lightning Network experience since you won't be able to route payments or create your own channels but it is definitely an easy way for beginners like you to get onboard.

Hey there!

I owe a friend a few bucks and, since we would like to experiment with Bitcoin, he agreed to have them sent over the Lightning Network. I went to an exchange and bought 0.003 BTC, I now would like to send 0.001 BTC to him.

After reading some articles, I have probably realized that there is no use in opening a direct channel between him and me, since channels are made for recurring transactions and we are unlikely to have any in the future.

So i figured out what i need instead to do is:
- open a channel to a "famous" well connected node and fund 0.001 BTC into it
- have such "famous" node open a channel to my friend and fund the same amount into it
- finally send the LN payment to my friend, routing through such node

As a result, we will both end up with a channel opened with that node, me having a 0.001 inbound capacity, and him having 0.001 spending capacity, that we will be able to use in the future to send/receive to/from anyone connected to that node.

Is this correct? If yes, how can I accomplish it in practice?