Mastering the Lightning Network: A Second Layer Blockchain Protocol for Instant Bitcoin Payments

393 Pages·2021·21.675 MB·English

by  Andreas M. Antonopoulos, Olaoluwa Osuntokun, René Pickhardt

Mastering Lightning
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Mastering the Lightning Network
A Second Layer Blockchain Protocol for Instant Bitcoin
Payments
by Andreas M. Antonopoulos, Olaoluwa Osuntokun, and René Pickhardt
Copyright © 2022 aantonop Books LLC, René Pickhardt, and uuddlrlrbas LLC. All rights reserved.
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Mastering the Lightning Network is offered under the Creative Commons Attribution-
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ISBN-13: 978-1492054863
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About the Authors
Andreas M. Antonopoulos is a best-selling author, speaker, educator, and highly sought after
expert in Bitcoin and open blockchain technologies. He is known for making complex subjects easy
to understand and highlighting both the positive and negative impacts these technologies can have
on our global societies.
Andreas has written two more best-selling technical books for programmers with O’Reilly Media,
Mastering Bitcoin and Mastering Ethereum. He has also published The Internet of Money series of
books, which focus on the social, political, and economic importance and implications of these
technologies. Andreas produces free educational content on his YouTube channel weekly and
teaches virtual workshops on his website. Learn more at aantonop.com.
Olaoluwa Osuntokun is the cofounder and CTO of Lightning Labs, and also the lead developer of
lnd, one of the main implementations of Lightning. He received his BS and MS in Computer Science
from UCSB and was a member of the Forbes 30 Under 30 class of 2019. During his graduate studies
he focused on the field of applied cryptography, specifically encrypted search. He has been an
active Bitcoin developer for over five years, and is an author of several Bitcoin Improvement
Proposals (BIP-157 and 158). These days, his primary focus lies in building, designing, and evolving
private, scalable off-chain blockchain protocols, such as Lightning.
René Pickhardt is a trained mathematician and data science consultant who uses his statistical
knowledge to do research with NTNU about pathfinding, privacy, reliability of payments, and
service-level agreements of the Lightning Network. René maintains a technical and developer-
oriented YouTube channel about the Lightning Network and has answered roughly half of the
questions about the Lightning Network on the Bitcoin Stack Exchange, making him the go-to point
for almost all new developers who want to join the space. René has held numerous workshops
about the Lightning Network in public and private, including teaching students of the 2019
Chaincode Labs residency together with other core Lightning developers.
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Preface
The Lightning Network (LN) is a second layer peer-to-peer network that allows us to make Bitcoin
payments "off-chain," meaning without committing them as transactions to the Bitcoin blockchain.
The Lightning Network gives us Bitcoin payments that are secure, cheap, fast, and much more
private, even for very small payments.
Building on the idea of payment channels, first proposed by Bitcoin’s inventor Satoshi Nakamoto,
the Lightning Network is a routed network of payment channels where payments "hop" across a
path of payment channels from the sender to the recipient.
The initial idea of the Lightning Network was proposed in 2015 in the groundbreaking paper "The
Bitcoin Lightning Network: Scalable Off-Chain Instant Payments," by Joseph Poon and Thaddeus
Dryja. By 2017, there was a "test" Lightning Network running on the internet, as different groups
built compatible implementations and coordinated to set some interoperability standards. In 2018,
the Lightning Network went "live" and payments started flowing.
In 2019, Andreas M. Antonopoulos, Olaoluwa Osuntokun, and René Pickhardt agreed to collaborate
to write this book. It appears we have been successful!
How to Use This Book
Intended Audience
This book is mostly intended for technical readers with an understanding of the fundamentals of
Bitcoin and other open blockchains.
Conventions Used in This Book
The following typographical conventions are used in this book:
Italic
Indicates new terms, URLs, email addresses, filenames, and file extensions.
Constant width
Used for program listings, as well as within paragraphs to refer to program elements such as
variable or function names, databases, data types, environment variables, statements, and
keywords.
Constant width bold
Shows commands or other text that should be typed literally by the user.
Constant width italic
Shows text that should be replaced with user-supplied values or by values determined by
context.
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TIP This element signifies a tip or suggestion.
NOTE This element signifies a general note.
WARNING This element indicates a warning or caution.
Code Examples
The examples are illustrated in Go, C++, Python, and using the command line of a Unix-like
operating system. All code snippets are available in the GitHub repository under the code
subdirectory. Fork the book code, try the code examples, or submit corrections via GitHub.
All the code snippets can be replicated on most operating systems with a minimal installation of
compilers, interpreters, and libraries for the corresponding languages. Where necessary, we
provide basic installation instructions and step-by-step examples of the output of those instructions.
Some of the code snippets and code output have been reformatted for print. In all such cases, the
lines have been split by a backslash (\) character, followed by a newline character. When
transcribing the examples, remove those two characters and join the lines again and you should see
identical results to those shown in the example.
All the code snippets use real values and calculations where possible, so that you can build from
example to example and see the same results in any code you write to calculate the same values.
For example, the private keys and corresponding public keys and addresses are all real.
Using Code Examples
If you have a technical question or a problem using the code examples, please send email to
[e-mail].
This book is here to help you get your job done. In general, if example code is offered with this
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We appreciate, but do not require, attribution. An attribution usually includes the title, author,
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Antonopoulos, Olaoluwa Osuntokun, and René Pickhardt (O’Reilly). Copyright 2022 aantonop Books
LLC, René Pickhardt, and uuddlrlrbas LLC, ISBN 978-1-492-05486-3."
Mastering the Lightning Network is offered under the Creative Commons Attribution-
Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0).
If you feel your use of code examples falls outside fair use or the permission given previously, feel
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free to contact us at [e-mail].
References to Companies and Products
All references to companies and products are intended for educational, demonstration, and
reference purposes. The authors do not endorse any of the companies or products mentioned. We
have not tested the operation or security of any of the products, projects, or code segments shown
in this book. Use them at your own risk!
Addresses and Transactions in This Book
The Bitcoin addresses, transactions, keys, QR codes, and blockchain data used in this book are, for
the most part, real. That means you can browse the blockchain, look at the transactions offered as
examples, retrieve them with your own scripts or programs, etc.
However, note that the private keys used to construct the addresses printed in this book have been
"burned." This means that if you send money to any of these addresses, the money will either be
lost forever or (more likely) appropriated, since anyone who reads the book can take it using the
private keys printed herein.
DO NOT SEND MONEY TO ANY OF THE ADDRESSES IN THIS BOOK. Your
WARNING
money will be taken by another reader, or lost forever.
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Please address comments and questions concerning this book to the publisher:
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Contacting Andreas
You can contact Andreas M. Antonopoulos on his personal site: https://aantonop.com/
Subscribe to Andreas’s channel on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/aantonop
Like Andreas’s page on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AndreasMAntonopoulos
Follow Andreas on Twitter: https://twitter.com/aantonop
Connect with Andreas on LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/company/aantonop
Andreas would also like to thank all of the patrons who support his work through monthly
donations. You can support Andreas on Patreon at https://patreon.com/aantonop.
Contacting René
You can contact René Pickhardt on his personal site: https://ln.rene-pickhardt.de/
Subscribe to René’s channel on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/RenePickhardt
Follow René on Twitter: https://twitter.com/renepickhardt
Connect with René on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rene-pickhardt-80313744/
René would also like to thank all of the patrons who support his work through monthly donations.
You can support René on Patreon at https://patreon.com/renepickhardt.
Or you can support his work directly with Bitcoin (also via the Lightning Network) at
https://donate.ln.rene-pickhardt.de for which René is equally thankful as for his patreons.
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Contacting Olaoluwa Osuntokun
You can contact Olaoluwa Osuntokun at his professional email address: [e-mail]
Follow Olaoluwa on Twitter: https://twitter.com/roasbeef
Acknowledgments By Andreas
I owe my love of words and books to my mother, Theresa, who raised me in a house with books
lining every wall. My mother also bought me my first computer in 1982, despite being a self-
described technophobe. My father, Menelaos, a civil engineer who published his first book at 80
years old, was the one who taught me logical and analytical thinking and a love of science and
engineering.
Thank you all for supporting me throughout this journey.
Acknowledgments By René
I want to thank the German education system through which I acquired the knowledge upon which
my work builds. It is one of the greatest gifts I was given. Similarly I want to thank the German
public healthcare system and every person devoting their time into working within that industry.
Your effort and endurance make you my personal heroes and I will never forget the help, patience,
and support I received when I was in need. Thanks goes to all the students I was allowed to teach
and who engaged in interesting discussions and questions. From you I learned the most. I am also
grateful to the Bitcoin and Lightning Network community that warmly welcomed me and to the
enthusiasts and private persons who financially supported and continue to support my work. In
particular I am grateful to all the open source developers (not only Bitcoin and Lightning Network)
and to the people who fund them to make that technology possible. A special thanks goes to my
coauthors for riding with me through the storm. Last but not least, I am thankful to my loved ones.
Acknowledgments by Olaoluwa Osuntokun
I’d like to thank the amazing team at Lightning Labs, as without you all, there would be no LND. I’d
also like to thank the original set of authors of the BOLT specification: Rusty Russell, Fabrice Drouin,
Conner Fromnkchet, Pierre-Marie Padiou, Lisa Neigut, and Christian Decker. Last but not least, I’d
like to thank Joseph Poon and Tadge Dryja, the authors of the original Lightning Network paper, as
without them, there would be no Lightning Network to write a book about.
Contributions
Many contributors offered comments, corrections, and additions to the book as it was
collaboratively written on GitHub.
Following is an alphabetically sorted list of all the GitHub contributors, including their GitHub IDs
in parentheses:
• 8go (@8go)
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• Aaqil Aziz (@batmanscode)
• Alexander Gnip (@quantumcthulhu)
• Alpha Q. Smith (@alpha_github_id)
• Ben Skee (@benskee)
• Brian L. McMichael (@brianmcmichael)
• CandleHater (@CandleHater)
• Daniel Gockel (@dancodery)
• Dapeng Li (@luislee818)
• Darius E. Parvin (@DariusParvin)
• Doru Muntean (@chriton)
• Eduardo Lima III (@elima-iii)
• Emilio Norrmann (@enorrmann)
• Francisco Calderón (@grunch)
• Francisco Requena (@FrankyFFV)
• François Degros (@fdegros)
• Giovanni Zotta (@GiovanniZotta)
• Gustavo Silva (@GustavoRSSilva)
• Guy Thayakorn (@saguywalker)
• Haoyu Lin (@HAOYUatHZ)
• Hatim Boufnichel (@boufni95)
• Imran Lorgat (@ImranLorgat)
• Jeffrey McLarty (@jnmclarty)
• John Davies (@tigeryant)
• Julien Wendling (@trigger67)
• Jussi Tiira (@juhi24)
• Kory Newton (@korynewton)
• Lawrence Webber (@lwebbz)
• Luigi (@gin)
• Maximilian Karasz (@mknoszlig)
• Omega X. Last (@omega_github_id)
• Owen Gunden (@ogunden)
• Patrick Lemke (@PatrickLemke)
• Paul Wackerow (@wackerow)
• Randy McMillan (@RandyMcMillan)
• René Köhnke (@rene78)
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