c-lightning is a standard compliant implementation of the Lightning Network protocol. The Lightning Network is a scalability solution for Bitcoin, enabling secure and instant transfer of funds between any two parties for any amount.

For more information about the Lightning Network please refer to http://lightning.network.

This implementation is still very much a work in progress. It can be used for testing, but it should not be used for real funds. We do our best to identify and fix problems, and implement missing features.

Any help testing the implementation, reporting bugs, or helping with outstanding issues is very welcome. Don't hesitate to reach out to us on IRC at #lightning-dev @ freenode.net, #c-lightning @ freenode.net, or on the mailing list [email protected].

c-lightning currently only works on Linux (and possibly Mac OS with some tweaking), and requires a locally running bitcoind (version 0.15 or above) that is fully caught up with the network you're testing on.

Please refer to the installation documentation for detailed instructions. For the impatient here's the gist of it for Ubuntu and Debian:

sudo apt-get install -y autoconf build-essential git libtool libgmp-dev libsqlite3-dev python python3 net-tools
git clone https://github.com/ElementsProject/lightning.git
cd lightning
make

Or if you like to throw docker into the mix:

sudo docker run \
	-v $HOME/.lightning:/root/.lightning \
	-v $HOME/.bitcoin:/root/.bitcoin \
	-p 9735:9735 \
	cdecker/lightningd:latest

In order to start lightningd you will need to have a local bitcoind node running in either testnet or regtest mode:

bitcoind -daemon -testnet

Wait until bitcoind has synchronized with the testnet network. In case you use regtest, make sure you generate at least 432 blocks to activate SegWit.

Make sure that you do not have walletbroadcast=0 in your ~/.bitcoin/bitcoin.conf, or you may run into trouble.

You can start lightningd with the following command:

lightningd/lightningd --network=testnet --log-level=debug

First you need to transfer some funds to lightningd so that it can open a channel:

# Returns an address <address>
cli/lightning-cli newaddr

# Returns a transaction id <txid>
bitcoin-cli -testnet sendtoaddress <address> <amount>

lightningd will register the funds once the transaction is confirmed.

If you don't have any testcoins you can get a few from a faucet such as TPs' testnet faucet or Kiwi's testnet faucet. You can send it directly to the lightningd address.

Confirm lightningd got funds by:

# Returns an array of on-chain funds.
cli/lightning-cli listfunds

Once lightningd has funds, we can connect to a node and open a channel. Let's assume the remote node is accepting connections at <ip> (and optional <port>, if not 9735) and has the node ID <node_id>:

cli/lightning-cli connect <node_id> <ip> [<port>]
cli/lightning-cli fundchannel <node_id> <amount>

This opens a connection and, on top of that connection, then opens a channel. The funding transaction needs 1 confirmations in order for the channel to be usable, and 6 to be broadcast for others to use. You can check the status of the channel using cli/lightning-cli getpeers, which after 1 confirmation should say that state is CHANNELD_NORMAL; after 6 confirmations you can use cli/lightning-cli getchannels to verify that the public field is now true.

Payments in Lightning are invoice based. The recipient creates an invoice with the expected <amount> in millisatoshi (or "any" for a donation), a unique <label> and a <description> the payer will see:

cli/lightning-cli invoice <amount> <label> <description>

This returns some internal details, and a standard invoice string called bolt11 (named after the BOLT #11 lightning spec).

The sender can feed this bolt11 string to the decodepay command to see what it is, and pay it simply using the pay command:

cli/lightning-cli pay <bolt11>

Note that there are lower-level interfaces (and more options to these interfaces) for more sophisticated use.

JSON-RPC interface is documented in the following manual pages:

• invoice
• listinvoice
• waitinvoice
• waitanyinvoice
• delinvoice
• getroute
• sendpay

For simple access to the JSON-RPC interface you can use the cli/lightning-cli tool, or the python API client.