Part 2 - Lightning Node Basics
I wrote a post a couple of days ago about why you most likely won't make money running a Lightning Node. But I wanted to give a few reasons why you might still want to run one!
Why you want a Lightning Node
First and foremost, aside from the Lightning Network, running a Lightning Node means you become a full validator for the Bitcoin chain. Mining has been pulled out of reach for normal hardware: today it is only financially sustainable on esoteric hardware that can do nothing else. It needs high power, sophisticated cooling systems and a lot of it to turn a profit.
But you can still validate the transactions and run your own Bitcoin node and the software built for Lightning has made this really easy to set up. Umbrel, in particular, is a complete doddle to get working.
There's also RaspiBlitz and a fork of Umbrel (there's a fight over the openness of the FOSS of Umbrel.)
All of these come with a full Bitcoin validator which is part of the reason you need a 1TB SSD: the Bitcoin chain is around 460GB right now.
Privacy
Block Explorers
Even without using Lightning, what you get from running your own node is very useful. You suddenly have access to a bunch of tools and systems without leaving a mark across the Internet.
For example: someone sends you some Bitcoin. Hopefully you've given them a one time use Segwit address but you want to watch the transaction and see when it is confirmed.
One option is to look it up on Mempool.space on the public internet:
https://mempool.space/tx/8aed79a4ae18d6d75821ac3f78d803c34ea75f1c0fc14da35a02d703249dace5
But if you have your own Lightning Node (like my Umbrel) you can use a link like this (which will not work for any of you!)
http://umbrel.local:3006/tx/8aed79a4ae18d6d75821ac3f78d803c34ea75f1c0fc14da35a02d703249dace5
Same information but when you click on the first one, you're relying on a public internet site and who knows what kind of logs they keep. Will that click now tie YOUR IP address to that bitcoin address? That's a privacy risk.
Bitfeed is another beautiful block watching tool which again, you can run locally without the need to leave any traces on servers across the internet.
Wallet back ends
Another hugely useful part of running your own node is that you can inject Bitcoin transactions directly into the Bitcoin system witout your IP address being seen. This is because wallets like Wassabi can attach to your local Bitcoin node and use the Tor network (which Lightning uses too).
These two actions make a huge difference in the privacy of any given Bitcoin transaction.
The Electrum Bitcoin Wallet has a similar ability to attach to a locally running Bitcoin node and work.
A general purpose home server
Umbrel, in particular, is turning into a really beautiful piece of Home Server orchestration software. I personally think that loading up all these apps is at odds with its mission as a Lightning Node, but there's no reason why you have to put any Bitcoin or Lightning on an Umbrel! You can just not transfer any funds to it and it will do all this other stuff.
And finally
My post about running a Lightning node got quite a bit of attention on Reddit. The most thoughtful answer there is worth going through and that'll be my next post!
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I did not know about Bitfeed.
I will check it out.
Thanks for doing a series about Umbrel & Lightning / BTC Nodes. I run one but I feel a lot of people don't even know they exist.
Very helpful to the community !LUV
There's been an App explosion on Umbrel in recent months! I can stare at Bitfeed for hours.
Tailscale is absolutely mindblowing and I need to write about it too.
It's also got a little search option so you can put in your own transactions and watch them sit in the mempool.
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I want an Umbrel node without the BTC Node so i can just run all the other cool apps. :)
Apart from the disk space, running Bitcoin core is pretty easy. And there is a value in many of us doing it.
@simplegame(1/4) gave you LUV.
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This is an awesome information. I never really thought about sending BTC, that the IP address known. Can use Bitfeed, also Wassabi wallet. I use Mempool.space last time. There's so useful, thank you !
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Very good points about privacy.
All sorts of annoying and potentially nefarious actors want to try to link IP addresses to Bitcoin wallets.
This is really nice with the useful tool to change the system positively which will definitely help individuals to operate with it easily.
I guess one might make money running a node, but not like they'd want or the cost wouldn't just make it profitable enough and it wouldn't be worth it. I'll check out that answer on Reddit.
@brianoflondon, Saludos amigo, mis respetos hacia ud, yo realmente soy nuevo en esto y tengo muchas dudas, pregunta? esos Nodos son publicos o privados, habra una guia para conectarse a esa red? segun entiendo al utilizar Lightning, permiten transacciones sin comisiones y confirmaciones instantáneas en la red BTC, y segun he leido es un ecosistema que va en crecimiento.