Mastering the Lightning Network reading group session #4

[sbddesign]

Date: 2021-08-10
Time: 10:00am
Timezone: PDT (US west coast)
Duration: 1h
UTCTime: 2021-08-10 17:00 UTC

Agenda

This is a weekly call to read through the book Mastering the Lightning Network by Antonopoulos, Osuntokun, and Pickhardt. In each session, we will recap and discuss an agreed-upon section. See this page for the full schedule.

In this session, we will discuss Chapter 4 - Lightning Node Software, which guides you through setting up a node.

As discussed, only parts of the call will be recorded.

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[Bosch-0]

Interesting point here I wasn't aware of:

One notable difference between Eclair and LND or c-lightning is that Eclair doesn’t contain a separate bitcoin wallet but instead relies directly on the bitcoin wallet in Bitcoin Core. Recall that using LND we "funded" its bitcoin wallet by executing a transaction to transfer bitcoin from Bitcoin Core’s wallet to LND’s bitcoin wallet. This step is not necessary using Eclair. When running Eclair, the Bitcoin Core wallet is used directly as the source of funds to open channels. As a result, unlike the LND or c-lightning containers, the Eclair container does not contain a script to transfer bitcoin into its wallet on startup.

https://github.com/lnbook/lnbook/blob/develop/04_node_client.asciidoc#building-eclair-as-a-docker-container

If building a Lightning product that does not use the users own Bitcoin node and you choose Eclair over c-lightning / LND the on-chain UX component will be different due to the above.

[moneyball]

@Bosch-0 note that with LDK, it doesn't hard code any wallet. It can be integrated into any wallet design. LDK just needs to be fed block data be it blocks from a Core node (being run by the user, or, from a trusted 3rd party) or compact block filters from BIP 157/158 or block data from the Electrum API. LDK paves the way toward a future where a user only has one wallet not two. I'm told by the BTCPay project this is a major pain point for their merchants as it is confusing why they need 2 wallets, why they need to have 2 different wallet backup and recovery systems, etc.

[GBKS]

The recording is now up on BitcoinTV and YouTube.