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FAQ
Yes it is. Eclair Mobile is a real, self-contained lightning node that runs on your phone. It does not require you to run another Lightning Node node at home or in the cloud. It is not a custodial wallet either, you are in full control of your funds.
Eclair Mobile requires Android 5.0 or higher
Yes you can, starting with version 0.4.2.
No, and we do not have short term plans to release one.
Yes. Your seed (the 12 words that eclair will display when you start it for the first time) is a standard BIP39 seed with a BIP49 derivation path, which can be restored on any BIP49 compliant wallet. With Electrum for example, you would choose "I already have a seed", tick the BIP39 checkbox,and then select BIP49.
As long as you have your seed recovery words, you will recover all your on-chain funds.
For the funds locked in your lightning channels:
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If you've enabled the lightning channels backup feature prior to deleting/reinstalling the application, you will be able to restore your channels later. When reinstalling the wallet with the same seed, you'll just need to allow the application to access your Google Drive account.
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If you have not enabled the lightning channels backup feature, make sure that you've closed all your channels first before deleting the application. If one of the peers you are connected to is unreachable, you must "force-close" the channels you've opened with them, then wait until the closing transactions has been spent and the funds are returned to your wallet (see the answer to the question above).
Mobile nodes (and more generally terminal nodes that don't relay payments) are not public and will not be found by LN explorers. Other nodes won't have them in their routing table and won't display information about them.
I already have installed the testnet version of Eclair Mobile. Can I also install the mainnet version ?
Yes, they are 2 different, independent applications, with different identifiers and data directories.
I think I have enough money, but eclair says "None of your Lightning channels has enough balance to send this payment" ?
You cannot send all (or almost all) of your balance, you have to keep some of it:
- you need to maintain a reserve (which you can see in the "Channel Details" view when you select a channel)
- and you must also keep enough funds to pay for the on-chain bitcoin fees (the state of your channel has to be publishable, this is what enables you to close your channels whenever you want even if the peer you are connected to is gone).
That's probably a liquidity issue: everybody is trying to pay the same few merchants leading to channels quickly getting unbalanced.
The current state of the network (mostly <$10 channels) doesn't really allow routing payments worth more than $5. The best solution currently would be to open a channel directly with the merchant you are trying to pay. As the network grows that kind of problem will disappear.
Each payment has an expiry, after which you get your money back if your peer has not replied. When you send a payment it will remain pending until it has expired, been completed, or failed. Eclair Mobile will not send payment that have an expiry of more than a week (which means that payments could remain pending for more than a week !).
Each node set its own delay that is added to the payment expiry, typically 144 blocks (one day), but some nodes set a very high delay (more than a week) which makes it nearly impossible to route payment through them unless the route is very short.
Depending on what node you are connecting to, they may require more confirmations that eclair, in that case you just need to wait.
My channel was closed uncooperatively. Are my funds locked ? Do I need to do something to get them back ?
There are 2 ways 2 close a channel:
- mutual, or cooperative: both nodes are online and negotiate a final onchain fee and publish a tx that immediately sends their funds back to their bitcoin wallet
- unilateral or uncooperative: one node decides to close the channel (typically because one node decided to close the channel while the other node was offline, or because they disagree on current fees...). The node that closed the channel must wait until the closing tx has been confirmed a number of times (typically 144 confirmations, equivalent to 1 day, but it can be much more and this delay is set by the peer you connect to) before it can spend it and return the funds to the node's bitcoin wallet. This is automated and you don't have anything to do, eclair will monitor the blockchain and return the funds to your wallet as soon as possible. Of course you need to start the app for this to work.
Once the transaction that returns funds to your bitcoin wallet has been confirmed the channel will disappear from the channels tab.
If you are using Eclair Wallet 0.3.0 on Android then please checkout the answer below.
If you are using the new version (starting with version 0.3.1), you can check the refund delay in the channels details page. This value depends on the peer you connect to. This delay typically varies between 144 blocks (1 day) and 2000 blocks in extreme cases (2 weeks).
You should close all your open channels, install the new application, and transfer all your funds from the old app to the new app. Here is a step-by-step tutorial:
If you don't have any open channels, you can go directly to Step 3.
If you do have open channels, you need to close them. If all the nodes you're connected to are online and you channels are in NORMAL state, you can close them cooperatively, and your funds will be returned to your wallet. It should take a few seconds. Once the closing transaction has been confirmed 3 times, your channels will be closed and will disappear from the Lightning Channels tab. You will then be in the "I don't have any open channels" case described above.
If some of the nodes you are connected to are offline, you will need to close them uncooperatively, and then wait for the refund delay to expire before your funds can be returned to your bitcoin wallet.
If all your channels were closed cooperatively, you have nothing to do. They are not displayed in the Lightning Channels tab anymore.
If some of your channels have been closed uncooperatively, and the refund delay has passed, you should have recovered your funds and your channels should have been closed. They are not displayed in the Lightning Channels tab anymore.
If some of your channels are still stuck in CLOSING state, even after the refund delay has passed, please follow this tutorial, and contact us on gitter if you need help.
Once all your channels have been closed, go to step 3
Install Eclair Mobile from Google Play. The old app and the new app are separate, isolated applications with different data directories and can safely be installed side-by-side.
Then you have 2 options:
- restore your existing seed in the new app. Once it is done, both versions of Eclair will show the same bitcoin balance, and you can safely uninstall the old Eclair 0.3.0
- create a new seed in the new application, and transfer all your funds there with an on-chain transaction from the old application:
- copy an on-chain address from the new application
- open the old app, go to the
Transaction Historytab, click on theSend>Paste a payment request - Tick the
Empty Walletcheckbox, which will fill theamountfield with all your available funds (minus the onchain fee) and clickpay. This will publish a transaction that transfers all your funds from your Eclair 0.3.0 wallet to your Eclair 0.3.1 wallet. Once this transaction is confirmed you can safely uninstall Eclair 0.3.0