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Originally posted on Substack on Nov 22, 2022

Updated here on Dec 20, 2024

How to start using a powerful LN node on your mobile, self-custodial, open source, easy step by step guide.

This guide is dedicated to all those new users that want to start using Bitcoin Lightning Network (LN) in a FREE OPEN SOURCE, FULL NON-CUSTODIAL way.

Using Blixt Wallet, a full LN node on your mobile, wherever you are.

If you never used Bitcoin Lightning Network, before you begin, please read this simple explanation analogy about Lightning Network (LN).

IMPORTANT ASPECTS:

  1. Blixt is a private node, NOT a routing node! Keep that in mind.

    That means, all the LN channels in Blixt will be unannounced to the LN graph (so called private channels). That means, THIS NODE WILL NOT DO ROUTING of others payments through Blixt node.

    This Blixt node is NOT for routing, I repeat. Is mainly to be able to manage your own LN channels and do your LN payments privately, whenever you need.

    This Blixt node, is necessary to be online and synced ONLY BEFORE you are going to do your transactions. That’s why you will see an icon on top that indicate the sync status. It takes only few moments, depending how much time you kept it offline.

  2. Blixt is using LND (aezeed) as wallet backend, so don’t try to import other types of bitcoin wallets into it. Here you have explained the types of wallet mnemonic seeds. And here is a more extensive list of all types of wallets. So if you had previously a LND node, you can import the seed and the backup.channels into Blixt, as it is explained in this guide.
  3. Blixt important links - see them at the end of this guide, please bookmark them:

Blixt - First Contact

So… Darth’s Mom decided to start using LN with Blixt. Hard decision, but wise. Blixt is only for smart people and those who really want to learn more, deep use of LN.

Darth warn his mom:

“Mom, if you start using Blixt LN Node, you will need first to know what is Lightning Network and how it works, at least at basic level. Here I put together a simple list of resources about Lightning Network. Please read them first.”

Darth’s Mom read the resources and did her first step: install Blixt on her brand new Android device. Blixt is also available for iOS and macOS (desktop). But those are not for Darth’s Mom… Nevertheless it is recommended to use a newer version of Android, at least 9 or 10 for better compatibility and experience. Running a full LN node on a mobile device is not an easy task and could take some space (min 600MB) and memory.

Once you open Blixt, the “Welcome” screen will give you some options:

On top right corner, you will see 3 dots that activate a menu with:

OPTION A - Create new wallet

If you choose to “create a new wallet”, you will be redirected straight to the main screen of Blixt Wallet.

This is your “cockpit” and also is the “Main LN Wallet”, so be aware, it will show you only the balance of your LN wallet. The onchain wallet is separately displayed (see C).

A - Blixt blocks sync indicator icon. This is the most important thing for a LN node: to be synchronized with the network. If that icon is still there working, means your node IS NOT READY! So have patience, in special for the first initial sync. It could take up to 6-8 min, depending on your device and internet connection.

You could click it and see the status of the sync:

Also you could click on the “Show LND Log” (A) button if you want to see and read more technical details of the LND log, in real time. Is very useful for debug and learning more how LN works.

B - Here you can access all the Blixt Settings, and are a lot! Blixt is offering many rich features and options to manage your LN node like a pro. All those options are explained in details in the “Blixt Features Page - Options Menu”.

C - Here you have the “Magic Drawer” menu, also explained in details here. Here is the “Onchain Wallet” (B), Lightning Channels (C), Contacts, Channels status icon (A), Keysend (D).

D - Is the help menu, with links to FAQ / Guides page, contact developer, Github page and Telegram support group.

E - Indicate your first BTC address, where you can deposit your first testing sats. THIS IS OPTIONAL! If you deposit straight into that address, is opening a LN channel towards Blixt Node. That means you will see your deposited sats, going into another onchain transaction (tx), for opening that LN channel. You can check that into Blixt onchain wallet (see point C), clicking on the top right TX menu.

As you can see in the Onchain Transaction Log, the steps are very detailed indicating where the sats are going (deposit, open, close channel).

RECOMMENDATION:

After testing several situations, we came to the conclusion that is much better efficient to open channels between 1 and 5 M sats. Smaller channels tend to be depleted quickly and paying a higher % of fees comparative with bigger channels.

F - Indicate your main Lightning wallet balance. This is NOT your total Blixt wallet balance, it represent only the sats you have in Lightning Channels, available to send. As was indicated before, the Onchain wallet is separate. Keep in mind this aspect. The onchain wallet is separate for an important reason: it is used mainly for opening/closing LN channels.

Ok so now Darth’s Mom deposited some sats into that onchain address displayed on the main screen. It is recommended that when you do that, to keep your Blixt app online and active for a while, until the BTC tx is taken by the miners into the first block.

After that could take up to 20-30 min until is fully confirmed and the channel is open and you will see it in the Magic Drawer - Lightning Channels as active. Also the small colored dot on top of the drawer, if is green will indicate that your LN channel is online and ready to be used to send sats over LN.

The address and the welcome message displayed will disappear. There’s no more necessary to open a automatic channel now. You can also deactivate the option in Settings menu.

Is time to move on, testing other features and options to open LN channels.

Now, let’s open another channel with another node peer. Blixt community put togheter a list of good nodes to start using with Blixt.

Procedure to open a LN channel in Blixt

This is very simple, only take some few steps and a bit of patience:

Open Blixt and go to top drawer - Lightning Channels and click on the “+” button

Now, click on (A) camera to scan the QR code from Amboss page and the node details will be filled out. Add the amount of the sats for the channel you want and then select the fee rate for the tx. You can leave it auto (B) for a faster confirmation or adjust it manually sliding the button. You can also long press the number and edit it as you like.

Do not put less than 1 sat/vbyte ! Usually is better to consult the mempool fees before opening a channel and select a convenient fee.

Done, now just click on the button “open channel” and wait for 3 confirmations, that usually takes 30 min (1 block aprox each 10min).

Once is confirmed, you will see the channel active in your section “Lightning Channels”.

Blixt - Second Contact

Ok so now we have a LN channel with only OUTBOUND liquidity. That means we can only SEND, we still can’t RECEIVE sats over LN.

Why? Did you read the guides indicated in the beginning? No? Go back and read them. It is very important to understand how LN channels works.

As you can see in this example, the channel open with the first deposit, do not have too much INBOUND liquidity (“Can receive”) but have a lot of OUTBOUND liquidity (“Can send”).

So what options you have, if you want to receive more sats over LN?

Here are the steps to activate opening a Dunder channel:

OK, so after the Dunder channel is confirmed (will take few minutes) you will end up with having 2 LN channels: one opened initially with autopilot (channel A) and one with more inbound liquidity, opened with Dunder (channel B).

Good, now you are good to go, to send and receive enough sats over LN !

HAPPY BITCOIN LIGHTNING!

Blixt - Third Contact

Remember, in the chapter one “First Contact” were 2 options in the Welcome screen:

So now let’s discuss about how to restore a Blixt wallet or any other LND crashed node. This is a bit more technical, but please pay attention. Is not that hard.

OPTION B - Restore wallet

In the past I wrote a dedicated guide about how to restore a crashed Umbrel node, where I mentioned also the method of using Blixt as quick restore process, using the seed + channel.backup file from Umbrel.

I also wrote a guide how to restore your Blixt node or migrate your Blixt to another device, here.

But let’s explain in simple steps this process. As you can see in the image above, there are 2 things you should do to restore your previous Blixt/LND node:

Nevertheless to mention, if you previously didn’t have any open LN channels, there’s no need to upload any channels.backup file. Simply insert the 24 words seed and hit restore button.

Don’t forget to activate Tor, from the top 3 dots menu, as we explained in the Option A section. That is the case when you ONLY had Tor peers and could not be contacted over clearnet (domain/IP). Otherwise is not necessary.

Another useful feature is to set a specific Bitcoin node from that top menu. By default it sync blocks from node.blixtwallet.com (neutrino mode) but you can set any other Bitcoin node that provide neutrino sync.

So once you fill those options, and hit the restore button, Blixt will start first to sync the blocks through Neutrino as we explained in the First Contact chapter. So be patient and watch the restore process in the main screen, by clicking on the sync icon.

As you can see in this example, it shows that the bitcoin blocks are 100% synced (A) and the recovering process is in course (B). That means the LN channels you had previously, it will be closed and the funds restored into your Blixt onchain wallet.

This process takes time! So please, be patient and try to keep your Blixt active and online. The initial sync could take up to 6-8 min and the closing channels could take up to 10-15 min. So you better have the device charged well.

Once this process it started, you could check in the Magic Drawer - Lightning Channels, the status of each of your previous channels,showing that are in “pending to close” status. Once each channel is closed, you could see the closing tx in the onchain wallet (see Magic Drawer - Onchain), and open up the tx menu log.

Also will be good to check and add if are not there, your previously peers you had in your old LN node. So go to Settings menu, down to “Lightning Network” and enter into option “Show Lightning Peers”.

Inside the section you will see the peers you are connected in that moment and you could add more, better to add those you had channels before. Just go to Amboss page, search for your peer nodes aliases or nodeID and scan their node URI.

As you can in the image above, are 3 aspects:

A - represents the clearnet node address URI (domain/IP)

B - represents the Tor onion node address URI (.onion)

C - is the QR code to scan with your Blixt camera or the copy button.

This node address URI you have to add it into your peers list. So be aware is not enough just the node alias name or nodeID.

Now you can go to Magic Drawer (top left menu) - Lightning Channels, and you can see at which maturity block height the funds will be returned into your onchain address.

That block number 764272 is when the funds will be usable in your bitcoin onchain address. And it could take up to 144 blocks from the 1st confirmation block until are released. So check that in the mempool.

And that’s it. Just wait patiently until all channels are closed and funds back into your onchain wallet.

Blixt - Fourth Contact

This chapter is about customization and know better you Blixt Node. I will not describe all the features available, are too many and were already explained in the Blixt Features Page.

But I will point out some of those necessary to go forward using your Blixt and have a great experience.

A - Name (NameDesc)

The NamDesc is a standard for conveying "receiver name" in BOLT11 invoices.

This could be any name and can be changed anytime.

This option is really useful in various cases, when you want to send a name together with the invoice description, so the receiver could have a hint from who received those sats. This is fully optional and also in the payment screen, user have to tick the box indicating to send the alias name.

Here is an example of how would appear when you use chat.blixtwallet.com

This is another example sending to another wallet app that support NameDesc:

B - Lightning Box

Starting with the new v0.6.9-420 recently announced, Blixt introduced a new powerful feature for Lightning Address in Blixt.

This new feature is optional opt-in, is not ON by default!

For the moment the default LN Box is run by Blixt server and offer a @blixtwallet.com LN Address. But ANYBODY with a LND public node can run the Lightning Box server and offer LN Address for its own domain, self-custody.

Right now, the Blixt server is only forwarding the payments sent to LN addresses @blixtwallet.com to the Blixt users that set their LN address. Users must put their Blixt node wallet in "persistent mode" in order to receive these payments to their @blixtwallet.com LN addresses.

See in the release notes the video demo about how to setup your LN Address in Blixt.

This LN address implemented into Blixt wallet app, is like a chat over LN, instant and fun, also supporting LUD-18 (adding an alias name to a payment). You can add in contact list all your regular LN addresses you are using frecquently and have it at hand for chatting. Now Blixt can be considered a full LN chat app 😂😂.

Another useful feature is the full support fro LUD-18 (that also Stacker.News and others is supporting it).

As you can see in the screenshot above, sending from a Stacker News account, it displayed nicely the logo + LN address + message. Same way works for sending from Blixt, you can attach your Blixt LN Address or simply add the alias name (previously set in Blixt settings) or even both.

This option from LUD-18 could be useful also for subscription services, where user can send a specific alias (is NOT your node alias or your real name!) and based on that you could be registered or receive back a specific message or whatever else. Attaching an alias name (LUD-18)+ comment (LUD-12) to a LN payment can have multiple use cases!

Here is the code for Lightning Box if you run it for yourself, for your family and friends, on your own node.

Here also you can run the LSP Dunder server for Blixt mobile nodes and offer liquidity for Blixt users if you have a good public LN node (works only with LND).

C - Backup LN Channels and seed words

This is a very important feature !

After opening or closing a LN channel you should do a backup. It can be done manually saving a small file on local device (download folder usually) or using a Google Drive or iCloud account.

Go to Blixt Settings - Wallet section. There you have the options to save all important data for your Blixt wallet:

I would recommend for this section the following:

Conclusion

OK, there are many other amazing features that Blixt offers, I will let you discover them one by one and have fun.

This app is really underestimated, mainly because is not backed by any VCs funding, is community driven, build with love and passion for Bitcoin and Lightning Network.

This mobile LN node, Blixt is a very powerful tool in hands of many users, if they know how to use it well. Just imagine, you are walking around the world with a LN node in your own pocket and nobody will know it.

And not talking about all other rich features that come with, that very few or none other wallet apps could offer.

Meanwhile here are all the links about this amazing Bitcoin Lightning Node:

DISCLAIMER:

I am not paid or supported in any way by the developers of this app. I wrote this guide because I saw that the interest in this wallet app is increasing and new users still don’t understand how to start with it. Also to help Hampus (the main dev) with documentation about using this node wallet.

I do not have any other interest in promoting this LN app, other than pushing forward the Bitcoin and LN adoption. This is the only way!