pcjustin / lit

Lightning Network node software

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lit - a lightning node you can run on your own

Lit Logo

Build Status

Under development, not for use with real money.

Setup

Prerequisites

  • Git

  • Go

  • make

  • (Optional, Windows) a Cygwin environment might make things easier for you.

  • (Optional, for full test suite) Python 3 + requests library from PyPI

Downloading

Just use Git to download the repo and then cd into it.

git clone https://github.com/mit-dci/lit
cd lit

Installation

Linux, macOS, Cygwin, etc.

Go has its own build process and dependency management, but for Lit it's a little more complicated, so we set up a Makefile to do most of the work for you.

To build Lit and Lit-AF, just use the following command. You don't have to have a $GOPATH set up in any particular way since we handle that for you.

make # or `make all`

This will also run the test suite. Running make test with-python=true will include the python tests (requires bitcoind) that do some heavier testing.

Windows

It's recommended to install Cygwin and follow those setup instructions. Or just download prebuilt binaries.

  1. Make sure that your %GOPATH% environmental variable is set up correctly.

  2. Download dependencies and then build with something like this:

go get -v ./...
cd %GOPATH%\src\github.com\mit-dci\lit
go build -v .
go build -v .\cmd\lit-af

Running

The below command will run Lit on the Bitcoin testnet3. You probably need to have bitcoind running on your machine such that Lit can connect to it when do you this.

(Note: Windows users can take off ./ but may need to change lit to lit.exe in the second line.)

./lit --tn3=true

Run ./lit --tn3=true to start Lit on the Bitcoin testnet3

The words yup, yes, y, true, 1, ok, enable, on can be used to specify that Lit automatically connect to a set of populated seeds. It can also be replaced by the address of the remote node you wish to connect to.

Packaging

This is a separate thing, but you can make a archive package for distribution by using this:

./build/releasebuild.sh <os> <arch>

and it'll be dropped into build/_releasedir. It should support any OS that Go and our dependencies support. Just instead of windows use win and instead of 368 use i386.

ALSO: You can also package for Linux, macOS, and Windows in both amd64 and i386 by just running make package. (Except macOS is only amd64.)

And running ./build/releasebuild.sh clean will cleanup the dirs it generates.

Using Lightning

Great! Now that you are all done setting up lit, you can

  • read about the arguments for starting lit here
  • read about the folders for the code and what does what here
  • head over to the Walkthrough to create some lit nodes or
  • check out how to Contribute.

Command line arguments

When starting lit, the following command line arguments are available. The following commands may also be specified in lit.conf which is automatically generated on startup.

Connecting to networks

Arguments Details Default Port
--tn3 <nodeHostName> connect to nodeHostName, which is a bitcoin testnet3 node. 18333
--reg <nodeHostName> connect to nodeHostName, which is a bitcoin regtest node. 18444
--lt4 <nodeHostName> connect to nodeHostName, which is a litecoin testnet4 node. 19335

Other settings

Arguments Details
-v or --verbose Verbose; log everything to stdout as well as the lit.log file. Lots of text.
--dir <folderPath> Use folderPath as the directory. By default, saves to ~/.lit/.
-p or --rpcport <portNumber> Listen for RPC clients on port portNumber. Defaults to 8001. Useful when you want to run multiple lit nodes on the same computer (also need the --dir option).
-r or --reSync Try to re-sync to the blockchain.

Folders

Folder Name Details
bech32 Util for the Bech32 spec
btcutil Misc bitcoin-specific libraries
build Tools used for building Lit
cmd Has some rpc client code to interact with the lit node. Not much there yet
coinparam Information and other constants for identifying currencies
consts Global constants
crypto Small utility cryptographic libraries
dlc Discreet Log Contracts!
docs Other walkthroughs for doing things in Lit, also misc pictures
elkrem A hash-tree for storing log(n) items instead of n
litbamf Lightning Network Browser Actuated Multi-Functionality -- web gui for lit
litrpc Websocket based RPC connection
lndc Lightning network data connection -- send encrypted / authenticated messages between nodes
lnutil Some widely used utility functions
portxo Portable utxo format, exchangable between node and base wallet (or between wallets). Should make this into a BIP once it's more stable.
powless Introduces a web API chainhook in addition to the uspv one
qln A quick channel implementation with databases. Doesn't do multihop yet.
sig64 Library to make signatures 64 bytes instead of 71 or 72 or something
snap Snapcraft metadata
test Integration tests
uspv Deals with the network layer, sending network messages and filtering what to hand over to wallit
wallit Deals with storing and retrieving utxos, creating and signing transactions
watchtower Unlinkable outsourcing of channel monitoring
wire Tools for working with binary data structures in Bitcoin

Hierarchy of packages

One instance of lit has one litNode (package qln).

LitNodes manage lndc connections to other litnodes, manage all channels, rpc listener, and the ln.db. Litnodes then initialize and contol wallits.

A litNode can have multiple wallits; each must have different params. For example, there can be a testnet3 wallit, and a regtest wallit. Eventually it might make sense to support a root key per wallit, but right now the litNode gives a rootPrivkey to each wallet on startup. Wallits each have a db file which tracks utxos, addresses, and outpoints to watch for the upper litNode. Wallits do not directly do any network communication. Instead, wallits have one or more chainhooks; a chainhook is an interface that talks to the blockchain.

One package that implements the chainhook interface is uspv. Uspv deals with headers, wire messages to fullnodes, filters, and all the other mess that is contemporary SPV.

(in theory it shouldn't be too hard to write a package that implements the chainhook interface and talks to some block explorer. Maybe if you ran your own explorer and authed and stuff that'd be OK.)

Dependency graph

Dependency Graph

License

MIT

About

Lightning Network node software

License:MIT License


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