Lightning

An easy-to-use cross platform lightning wallet

N.B. This is still early technology and there’s a risk of losing all of your funds. We recommend not putting in more money than you are willing to lose.

Getting Started

The app comes for two threat models:

1. Pocket Money: prebuilt and signed releases with auto update (recommended for most users).

2. Tin Foil Hat: if you'd rather build it yourself and do without auto updates, see the instructions below.

Contributing

See the ToDo (next release) column on our project board. Issues that are easy to pick up for outside contributors are labeled help wanted.

Developing Locally

To build the mobile app locally, see the README in the /mobile directory for instructions.

To build the desktop app locally follow the instructions below:

Install lnd

We will use lnd to make GRPC calls from the ReactJS environment

git clone https://github.com/lightningnetwork/lnd $GOPATH/src/github.com/lightningnetwork/lnd
cd $GOPATH/src/github.com/lightningnetwork/lnd
make && make install tags="experimental autopilotrpc signrpc walletrpc chainrpc invoicesrpc routerrpc"

If you have any issues with this step, make sure to review the Preliniaries to installing LND

Install btcd

We will use btcd as the backend operating mode

git clone https://github.com/btcsuite/btcd $GOPATH/src/github.com/btcsuite/btcd
cd $GOPATH/src/github.com/btcsuite/btcd
GO111MODULE=on go install -v . ./cmd/...

Set up & run

Cloning this git repo git clone https://github.com/lightninglabs/lightning-app and from the project root folder run the following commands:

npm install

npm test

To start the app in development mode (simnet):

npm run electron-dev

Running in development mode can allow you to run in full node mode instead of the default neutrino mode, and will also allow you to run in simnet node for testing. The app will use it's own lnd data/lnd dir and does not share state with other lnd installations on your system. See setup local cluster on how to set up your simnet cluster for development.

Review UI style guide

To build the UI style guide

npm run storybook

Building the Packaged App

To build the packaged version of the app e.g. for macOS run:

cp $GOPATH/bin/lnd ./assets/bin/darwin
npm run electron-pack

The packaged app will then be available in the dist directory. The packaged version of the app will run on Bitcoin mainnet.

Starting the Packaged App (light client)

To run the packaged version of the app e.g. for macOS run:

./dist/mac/Lightning.app/Contents/MacOS/Lightning

The app is configured for mainnet by default but you can opt-in to testnet:

./dist/mac/Lightning.app/Contents/MacOS/Lightning --bitcoin.testnet --bitcoin.node=neutrino --neutrino.addpeer=btcd-testnet.lightning.computer --neutrino.feeurl=https://nodes.lightning.computer/fees/v1/btc-fee-estimates.json

Starting the Packaged App (full node)

btcd

Start btcd in a separate terminal session and wait until it's fully synced (can take a while):

btcd --txindex --rpcuser=kek --rpcpass=kek

To run the packaged version of the app e.g. for macOS run:

./dist/mac/Lightning.app/Contents/MacOS/Lightning --bitcoin.mainnet --btcd.rpcuser=kek --btcd.rpcpass=kek

bitcoind

Start bitcoind in a separate terminal session and wait until it's fully synced (can take over a day):

bitcoind -txindex=1 -rpcuser=kek -rpcpassword=kek -rpcbind=localhost -zmqpubrawblock=tcp://127.0.0.1:28332 -zmqpubrawtx=tcp://127.0.0.1:28333

To run the packaged version of the app e.g. for macOS run:

./dist/mac/Lightning.app/Contents/MacOS/Lightning --bitcoin.mainnet --bitcoin.node=bitcoind --bitcoind.rpcuser=kek --bitcoind.rpcpass=kek --bitcoind.zmqpubrawblock=tcp://127.0.0.1:28332 --bitcoind.zmqpubrawtx=tcp://127.0.0.1:28333

Lnd data and logs

Lnd data and logs are written to the following locations in production:

• Linux: ~/.config/lightning-app/lnd
• OSX: ~/Library/Application Support/lightning-app/lnd
• Windows: %USERPROFILE%\AppData\Roaming\lightning-app\lnd