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LIGHTNINGD(8)							   LIGHTNINGD(8)

NAME
     lightningd -- Daemon for running a Lightning Network node

SYNOPSIS
     lightningd [--conf=<config-file>] [OPTIONS]

DESCRIPTION
     lightningd  starts the Core Lightning daemon, which implements a standards-
     compliant Lightning Network node.

CONFIGURATION OPTIONS
     *	--conf=FILE Specify configuration file. If not an absolute path, will be
	relative from the lightning-dir location. Defaults to config.

     *	--lightning-dir=DIR Set the directory for the Core Lightning daemon. De-
	faults to $HOME/.lightning.

MORE OPTIONS
     Command line options are mirrored as configuration options in the	configu-
     ration  file,  so foo in the configuration file simply becomes --foo on the
     command line, and foo=bar becomes --foo=bar.

     See lightningd-config(5) for a comprehensive list of all available options.

LOGGING AND COMMANDING CORE LIGHTNING
     By default, Core Lightning will log to the standard output.  To  log  to  a
     specific  file, use --log-file=PATH.  Sending SIGHUP will cause Core Light-
     ning to reopen this file, for example to do log rotation.

     Core Lightning will set up a Unix domain socket for receiving commands.  By
     default this will be the file lightning-rpc in  your  specified  lightning-
     dir.   You  can  use  $ lightning-cli(1) to send commands to Core Lightning
     once lightningd has started; you need  to	match  the  --lightning-dir  and
     --rpc-file options between them.

     Commands for Core Lightning are described in various manpages in section 7,
     with the common prefix lightning-.

QUICK START
     First,  decide on and create a directory for lightning-dir, or just use the
     default $HOME/.lightning. Then create a config file in this directory  con-
     taining your configuration.

     Your  other main preparation would be to set up a mainnet Bitcoin fullnode,
     i.e. run a bitcoind(1) instance. The rest of this quick  start  guide  will
     assume  you  are reckless and want to spend real funds on Lightning: other-
     wise indicate network=testnet in your config file explicitly.

     Core Lightning needs to communicate with the Bitcoin Core RPC. You can  set
     this  up  using  bitcoin-datadir, bitcoin-rpcconnect, bitcoin-rpcport, bit-
     coin-rpcuser, and bitcoin-rpcpassword options in your config file.

     Finally, just to keep yourself sane, decide on a log file name and indicate
     it using log-file=lightningd.log in your config file. You might  be  inter-
     ested in viewing it periodically as you follow along on this guide.

     Once the bitcoind instance is running, start lightningd(8):

     $ lightningd --lightning-dir=$HOME/.lightning --daemon

     This starts lightningd in the background due to the --daemon option.

     Check if things are working:

     $ $ lightning-cli --lightning-dir=$HOME/.lightning help
     $ $ lightning-cli --lightning-dir=$HOME/.lightning getinfo

     The  getinfo  command  in particular will return a blockheight field, which
     indicates the block height to which lightningd  has  been	synchronized  to
     (this  is	separate  from the block height that your bitcoind has been syn-
     chronized to, and will always lag behind bitcoind). You will have	to  wait
     until  the  blockheight  has  reached the actual blockheight of the Bitcoin
     network.

     Before you can get funds offchain, you need  to  have  some  funds  onchain
     owned  by lightningd (which has a separate wallet from the bitcoind it con-
     nects to). Get an address for lightningd via  lightning-newaddr(7)  command
     as  below	(--lightning-dir  option  has been elided, specify it if you se-
     lected your own lightning-dir):

     $ $ lightning-cli newaddr

     This will provide a native SegWit bech32  address.  Alternatively	you  can
     generate a taproot address with:

     $ $ lightning-cli newaddr p2tr

     Transfer  a  small  amount of onchain funds to the given address. Check the
     status of all your funds (onchain	and  on-Lightning)  via  lightning-list-
     funds(7):

     $ $ lightning-cli listfunds

     Now  you  need to look for an arbitrary Lightning node to connect to, which
     you can do by using dig(1) and querying lseed.bitcoinstats.com:

     $ dig lseed.bitcoinstats.com A

     This will give 25 IPv4 addresses, you can select any one of those. You will
     also need to learn the corresponding public key, which you can determine by
     searching the IP addrss on https://1ml.com/ . The public key is a long  hex
     string,				   like 			     so:
     024772ee4fa461febcef09d5869e1238f932861f57be7a6633048514e3f56644a1.   (this
     example public key is not used as of this writing)

     After determining a public key, use lightning-connect(7) to connect to that
     public key at that IP:

     $ $ lightning-cli connect $PUBLICKEY $IP

     Then open a channel to that node using lightning-fundchannel(7):

     $ $ lightning-cli fundchannel $PUBLICKEY $SATOSHI

     This  will require that the funding transaction be confirmed before you can
     send funds over Lightning. To track this,	use  lightning-listpeers(7)  and
     look at the state of the channel:

     $ $ lightning-cli listpeers $PUBLICKEY

     The  channel will initially start with a state of CHANNELD_AWAITING_LOCKIN.
     You need to wait for the channel state to become  CHANNELD_NORMAL,  meaning
     the funding transaction has been confirmed deeply.

     Once  the	channel state is CHANNELD_NORMAL, you can start paying merchants
     over Lightning. Acquire a Lightning invoice from  your  favorite  merchant,
     and use lightning-pay(7) to pay it:

     $ $ lightning-cli pay $INVOICE

ERRORS CODE
     *	1: Generic $ lightning-cli error
     *	10: Error executing subdaemons
     *	11: Error locking pidfile (often another lightningd running)
     *	20: Generic error related to HSM secret
     *	21: HSM secret is encrypted
     *	22: Bad password used to decrypt the HSM secred
     *	23:  Error caused from the I/O operation during a HSM decryption/encryp-
	tion operation
     *	30: Wallet database does not match (network or hsm secret)

BUGS
     You should report bugs on our github issues page, and maybe submit a fix to
     gain our eternal gratitude!

AUTHOR
     ZmnSCPxj ZmnSCPxj@protonmail.com wrote the  initial  version  of  this  man
     page,  but  many  others did the hard work of actually implementing a stan-
     dards-compliant Lightning Network node implementation.

SEE ALSO
     lightningd-rpc(7), lightning-listconfigs(7), lightningd-config(5), $ light-
     ning-cli(1), lightning-newaddr(7),  lightning-listfunds(7),  lightning-con-
     nect(7),	lightning-fundchannel(7),   lightning-listpeers(7),   lightning-
     pay(7), lightning-hsmtool(8)

RESOURCES
     Main web site: https://github.com/ElementsProject/lightning

COPYING
     Note: the modules in the ccan/ directory have their own licenses,	but  the
     rest of the code is covered by the BSD-style MIT license.

Core Lightning v26.06.1 					   LIGHTNINGD(8)
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