A while back, I posted about creating a website allowing you to find buyers/sellers of bitcoin in your local area with cash, face to face and without KYC or ID.

The idea was inspired by leafedout.com, a website allowing you to find cannabis vendors in your area. The site uses Google Maps with custom markers and is p2p. Although illegal in my country (Australia), the site works flawlessly. I could make purchases face-to-face with cash and buy confidently as I could rely on ratings left by other users.

With many exchanges and banks being forced to clamp down on Bitcoiners, I decided it was the right time to create such a site. In Australia, our banks have already started limiting transactions to exchanges and freezing accounts associated with Bitcoin, and it's almost impossible to buy/sell bitcoin without KYC in any amount (even at ATMs).

While I love the idea of applications like Bisq, I found it too clunky and difficult to use. The UX is poor, and it requires you to download and run an application (which doesn't even work out of the box on macOS).

With all that in mind, I decided to create CitySats.com. It allows you to create a marker on a map and locate, contact and rate buyers/sellers of bitcoin in your location.

The website is still a bit janky, but you can already start using it. I would love to hear your feedback.

Website: https://citysats.com

Source code (MIT licence): https://github.com/James-Sangalli/CitySats

Screenshots of the site:

• https://imgur.com/Wd0EAJq
• https://imgur.com/IzmlF7b

So satisfying.

Hello,

So i've downloaded Bitcoin node and i've also downloaded the LND and Lncli file from Github but now im confused on what im suppose to do. It doesnt make sense to me on the next step. Can someone please break it down for me in stupid terms. I am tryna learn but every video ive seen either contains ubuntu or ubuntu/windows but no just windows.

Very Sorry about this and thank you for the help.

I am following the Medium steps: https://medium.com/@johnny_pham/guide-setup-a-lightning-network-node-on-windows-8475206807f

This is my current step:

" Download and configure LND

Go to https://github.com/lightningnetwork/lnd/releases

For the latest release, go to Assets
and select Show all assets
. Download the appropriate LND binaries for Windows, e.g. lnd-windows-amd64-v0.15.2-beta.zip
for 64-bit machines.

Extract the downloaded zip archive. Note that there are two binaries: lnd.exe
and lncli.exe:

• lnd.exe

is the component that runs the actual LN node

• lncli.exe

is a command-line program to manage and interact with your LN node. If you prefer to use a GUI, see the section “GUI-based web apps for LN” near the end of this article.

Confused here - Open a command prompt in the extracted directory containing lnd.exe
and lncli.exe
.

To begin initialization of a LN node, run lnd.exe
with the following arguments. Set bitcoind.rpcuser
and bitcoind.rpcpass
to the corresponding values from your bitcoin.conf
file. Set externalip
to your IP address to accept incoming connections from other nodes:

lnd.exe --bitcoin.active --bitcoin.mainnet --bitcoin.node=bitcoind --bitcoind.rpcuser=replace_with_rpcuser_from_bitcoin.conf --bitcoind.rpcpass=replace_with_rpcpassword_from_bitcoin.conf --bitcoind.zmqpubrawblock=tcp://127.0.0.1:28332 --bitcoind.zmqpubrawtx=tcp://127.0.0.1:28333 --externalip=X.X.X.X

The initialization should proceed until it waits for a wallet encryption password. There’s more configuration to be done, so let’s shut down this LN node for now (ctrl+C
to shut it down in command prompt).

Let’s create lnd.conf
to simplify the above command. The default location is:

C:\Users\replace_with_your_username\AppData\Local\Lnd

In the Lnd
folder, create a new file called lnd.conf
, open it with a text editor and add the following lines. Set bitcoind.rpcuser
and bitcoind.rpcpass
to the corresponding values from your bitcoin.conf
file. Set externalip
to your IP address. The optional color
and alias
fields specify the colour and name your LN node will have on LN explorers:"

Does anyone here use Phoenix wallet?

I run an Umbrel node, but I don’t want to link a lightning wallet to it. I’ve been using Muun as a hassle free solution but I’m hearing good things about Phoenix wallet.

Would you recommend it, does it work flawlessly (like Muun) and is there anything a lazy power-ish user should know before downloading the app?

Thanks

Hello,

We're building a marketplace on our pre-existing platform with about 30,000 registered users and we are going to use BTC 'lightning' to pay our merchants.

BUT the biggest issue is there isn't an easy app like Cashapp, that allows us to send payment to users OUTSIDE of the US and let's them cash out super easily.

It seems it all has to be through exchanges.

Is there anything available that can be used as simple as Cashapp OUTSIDE of the US, for users to receive BTC via lightning then sell that BTC to withdrawal to bank or credit, debit card.

I saw ramp.network allows this BUT they do NOT allow adult brands or companies, of course..

So need an alternative that is similar so we can onboard our merchants to this product to use for withdrawls of funds they earn from selling product on our site.

Any help is useful, even using several things to accomplish, thank you!

Hey fellows,

Is there a GitHub repo or a tool that can be used to obtain all gossip messages that have been sent in the Bitcoin Lightning Network?

If it exists, is it realistically possible to construct a graph of weighted edges (and maybe even with a time line to see the networks evolution) of this data to simulate the history of the Lightning Network? I was thinking about a python/Julia script

I am asking, because I would like to do some research on the Lightning Network to get a better understanding of the rebalance-challenge of maintaining a node. But since running a Bitcoin Lightning Fullnode is not easy I am looking for a solution that works without that.

If that's impossible, I also had the idea of running a Lightning node in a docker container on a cloud provider (for example Microsoft Azure). I know that this completely contradicts the ethos of Bitcoin, still I am just looking for an "easy" solution that does not need a lot of tweaking/maintanance but just works, so I can focus on the analysis. I also don't know how much running this container might cost..

Thank you and if you have further ideas, feel free to add them!

My cousin is gonna give me an old gamer pc for me to run the btc core + LN node. I am going to install Ubuntu+Umbrel on it.

This Pc has 1Tb normal hard disk, not SSD. I've seen people saying it doesnt run on normal hard disk, only on SSD... Others said i can run. Does anyone here run lightning node on normal hard disk?

And with 1Tb, should i prune the Btc core? Because in little time 1Tb will not be enough for full blockchain.

I am also planning to buy a simple nobreak for like 30 dollars.

About internet, what is the minimum? I have a familiar internet of 350mega (distributed for 4 PCs). Do i need to hire more internet services?

I am trying to spend the least as possible rn hah, but i will buy everything that is utterly necessary. Luckily my cousin has an unused computer. TIA!

Rumors of a new attack are going around, so I thought I'd get ahead of the curve here with a non-hysterical post.

I've attempted to translate what I can grok below, or read the details yourself (thanks to u/TheGreatMuffin for the links):

https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2023-October/021999.html

https://github.com/ariard/mempool-research/blob/2023-10-replacement-paper/replacement-cycling.pdf

The bad news is that replacement cycling attacks are a vulnerability in the bare LN protocol, both in theory and under lab conditions, and successful execution could result in stolen funds. But keep your pants on...

The good news:

• This attack has never been seen in the wild.
• It requires extreme technical sophistication, along with expending the attacker's funds, with no guarantee of success.
• This has been known to Lightning devs since 2022, and a number of countermeasures are already deployed in all major LN implementations. While it isn't yet certain whether these measures make the attack impossible, they significantly reduce its odds of success and increase the attacker's expenditure.
• Only your channel partners could attempt this, and only during forwarding.

Personally I'd be surprised if we ever see this in the wild, even without the countermeasures, because it's risky, difficult and expensive. But it is an issue to watch going forward.

I expect this will get more attention both from the community and the devs in the near future, and hopefully we'll put a lid on it either with a new patch or a better explanation than I can give of the existing countermeasures.

I'll open a few channels the coming week. If you need some inbound liquidity please reply to this post with your node ID and requested channel size. Please be reasonable.
Also mind my limited connectivity until later this year: https://www.reddit.com/r/lightningnetwork/comments/15h0grt/psa_regarding_aybabtu/

​

Also of course feel free to open to me.

Are there any?

Hi all,

I'm new to the lightning network so go easy. I do find it very interesting and trying to learn more. I have some sats in my lntipbot balance and wanted to withdraw them into my phoenix wallet.

Am I right in saying that to do this, I'll need my phoenix wallet to have funds in there to provide the liquidity to receive sats from the lntipbot?

Thanks in advance

So both my Umbrel and Raspiblitz which I left at my parents house became unreachable in the last few months and I only just re-booted them. They seem fine now, except that all my channels are offline on both.

both used to be on old versions and I updated both after I got home.

Now I am running LND 0.16.2 on my raspiblitz and LND 0.16.4 on my Umbrel.

I tried rebooting them both a few times and troubleshooting but I can't figure out what's going on.

Anyone have any idea?

I'm in a Minecraft server that uses Bitcoin via Lightning as the server currency, so every item has a real world value and you have the ability to make real money just from playing. The in-game wallet is an actual Lightning wallet using LNBits, so it can be imported into Zeus or Blue Wallet and used as your daily-driver Lightning wallet, too.

There is currently a mostly vanilla SMP with land claim and an auction house to buy and sell items with other players using Bitcoin. This works with Java edition and Bedrock.

There is also a geopolitical/world-building world in beta right now that will feature nations, wars, and lots of lore. It's a perfect opportunity for role-playing or for players seeking world domination with a real value behind your actions. For now, it is Java only, but may support Bedrock in the future.

Message me if you’re interested or want to know more and I can send the Discord. If there are any questions I can't answer, the admins are super helpful and would gladly answer whatever questions you may have.

The website is https://sovereigncraft.com/ and the Minecraft server address is play.sovereigncraft.com

I am currently helping on this project with content creation and educational information.

Drink dispenser powered by the Lightning Network and BTCPay Server

Closer look and payment video

Node + Electrs are running fine. Electrum and LNbits site both using Tor, payment channel looks fine. When I hit the URL, the invoice is tied to the device but there is no amount (device is set to 1 sat). Pressing pay bring up an error dialog: "client error 500: message='internal server error'..."

Any suggestions are appreciated, thanks.

due to an upcoming migration this weekend max_htlc will be temporarily set to 0. Later the node will be offline a few hours (hence the stopping of routing). It will be back online by Sunday the latest, but with LIMITED REACHABILITY! Tor will still be connectable from the outside, but clearnet will not! (no port forward at temporary location). The node will connect to any published tor or clearned addresses of established peers, so if you are properly connectable or can handly tor it should not matter at all. Full connectivity will be restored by the end of 2023.

Edit 2022-08-05: node back up and routing, limited reachability as described above