Description
Usage with Lightning (on TESTNET)
Opening a LN channel
- Make sure you have funds (swipe to the left from the home screen to display your address and receive funds).You can get Testnet bitcoins from this faucet.
- Swipe to the right from the home screen, and click on the green
+button - You can now choose to scan/paste the adress of a Lightning Node.Alternatively, choose
Autoconnectto initiate a connection with one of our nodes. - Enter the capacity of the channel and click
Open.A transaction will be sent to fund the channel. You can find it in the transactions list as an outbound Bitcoin transaction, with an amount corresponding to the channel’s desired capacity. At this point the channel will have aWAIT_FOR_CONFIRMEDstate and can not be used yet. - Once the channel reaches the
NORMALstate (the funding transaction has 2+ confirmations) you can send payments!
Sending a LN payment
- Make sure you have at least one channel in a
NORMALstate with enough balance. - In the Transaction view, click the Send button.You can now scan or paste a Lightning Payment request. This is an invoice generated by a node in the network, and which contains the necessary informations required to execute a LN payment. We have set up Starblocks, a virtual coffee shop for testers. You can use it to generate LN payment requests.
- A window will open to display the informations about the payments. Click
Send Payment.The wallet will now find a route from your node to the destination node. Depending on the topology of the network and the amount of hops needed to reach the destination node, you will pays fees. For now, this wallet does not enable you to limit the fees. Once a valid route is found, the balance of one of your channels will be updated.If no route can be found, the payment fails and your channels are unchanged. The reasons can be multiple:- the destination node is not online;
- none of your channels has enough funds;
- the nodes between you and the destination node do not have channels with sufficient capacity to relay your payment;
- …
Closing a channel
- In the LN channels list, click on the channel you want to close.
- Click on the
Close channelbuttonIf the channel is not in aNORMALstate, the closing will be uncooperative. It means that you will have to wait for 144 blocks to receive your funds. This is a Lightning Network specification to prevent theft. - You will receive a Bitcoin transaction with the leftover balance of the channel.
