Funding Channels is a Pain in the 🍑

Joining the lightning network is daunting. You need connections to have a sovereign experience. In order to open lightning channels one must fund their new node using an on-chain transaction. After potentially several ~10-minute confirmations, you can open channels one at a time. Opening each channel costs on-chain mining fees and wastes lots of time waiting for confirmations between successive channel opens. Plus it is difficult to know when you have sufficient connections. You probably have to run the tools over and over between each new lightning channel open. Even then, that new node doesn't even have inbound channel capacity to accept payments!

Bootstrap any Node in 1️⃣ Transaction

We abstract the whole "getting connected" stage of lightning node setup for operators into a single QR code that prepares one bitcoin transaction to get a node fully connected. Just load up our app, tweak the config if you like, scan, and send. You'll have a well connected, balanced lightning node right away.

Watch the Demo 🧨

<iframe class="remirror-iframe remirror-iframe-youtube" src="https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/6a5a65zdP2o?" data-embed-type="youtube" allowfullscreen="true" frameborder="0"></iframe>

https://youtu.be/6a5a65zdP2o

Behind the Scenes 🌥

In the background, our software enables your empty lightning node to talk to a set of well-connected nodes and negotiate channel openings to be fulfilled with your incoming on-chain funds. Multiple channels to multiple peers can all be opened in the same transaction. We can show sane defaults so a typical setup can be well connected in exactly 1 scan.

What about Inbound? 📥

During funding, a third party could open an inbound channel to your new node in return for some fee. That third party does this by adding an input to the collaborative funding transaction, making it a PayJoin where transaction inputs and outputs can’t be so easily traced by a spying third party. 

We have ideas for queuing lightning channels and providing batching as a service, but we’re just getting stared. We’d love to hear from you. Tell us your ideas in the comments.

What do we say to surveillance economy spies? NOLOOKING!

Everything so far builds on top of the battle-hardened PayJoin protocol from 2018, so many wallets will be able to use this starting today.

The Dream Team 💭

Dan aka BITGOULD

Dan is focused on solving bitcoin's privacy problem. His work on TumbleBit, PayJoin, and Chaincase App has been sponsored by Human Rights Foundation and Geyser Grants. He co-hosted the first BitDevs Socratic Seminar events in Taiwan and Malaysia and co-hosts Boston BitDevs.

Armin aka 0xBEEFCAF3

Armin is more off a beef castle than a beef cafe, but he does brew mean Oolong tea. Armin is a Full Stack Engineer at Casa. He has been a PayJoin champion since before his winning appearance at the 2021 MIT Bitcoin Expo Hackathon and has contribued to the open source, privacy conscious iOS Chaincase App. Armin Co-hosts Boston BitDevs.

Nick aka UTXOCLUB

Nick is an Australian Bitcoin engineer best known for his open source payment processor SatSale, and for his oldschool (sometimes unsightly) websites. Nick is building software libraries for cutting edge cryptography that improves the privacy of multisignature Bitcoin transactions. Nick posts engineering resources and articles to utxo.club.

Try it out 🆕

• Open a channel from us to you at our operational demo here using any wallet that supports sending PayJoin

• Check out our project website

• Check out our bolt.fun page

• If you’re feeling brave, build it from source and run it on your own node.

Dark mode? 🌚

Not yet. Priorities 💁🏻‍♂️. Stay tuned.