Lightning Scripts

Scripts for running a lightning node. The LnTools library has tools for exploring the visible network given the connected peers.

Choosing nodes to connect with

The program ChooseNodes expects a list of available channels from c-lightning. You might do something like

lightningcli listchannels > channels.json

If you want to use lnd like

lncli describegraph > channels.json

then a few changes is needed in parsing the json file. See src/LnTools.hs.

The program also needs a list of nodes that you want to pay, or be able to reach, and a priority weight associated with each. This can be specified as a YAML file as such:

- node_id: $NODE_ID1
  weight: $WEIGHT1
- node_id: $NODE_ID2
  weight: $WEIGHT2
...

Shortcomings

This approach ignores the issue of balances within channels. Channels are only measured by their capacities, which are public as opposed to balances. For a channel b/w A and B: Balance(A) + Balance(B) = Capacity(A<-->B).

Also, this is clearly a greedy algorithm. Possibility to choose 2 or more nodes simultaneously to minimize path but not clear how to deal with combinations like that.