Phoenix Wallet's documentation says that if ACINQ disappears completely, users can either wait for Phoenix to move the funds to the "Final wallet" after a force close, or manually recover their funds by importing the BIP39 seed into a standard BIP84 wallet such as Electrum.
My question is about the second option.
As I understand it, importing the BIP39 seed into a regular on-chain wallet only restores the Bitcoin private keys derived from the BIP84 path. However, it does not restore the Lightning channel state or any Lightning-specific data.
So how would such an on-chain wallet recognize or recover funds that were still locked in Lightning channels? Would those funds only become recoverable after the channels have already been force-closed and the outputs have been published on-chain? Or is there some mechanism that allows recovery directly from the seed without access to the Lightning channel state?
Here is the official documentation for their wallet, where I found this information:
Thanks in advance for those who help me!
It doesn't.
You need Phoenix to close the channels; electrum may be useful in recovering additional funds (eg from channels force closed on their end).
I don't think Electrum is able to sweep the funds from timelocked addresses that force closes run through, but maybe I'm wrong.
Doh! Yeah, I should have been more clear: recovery after the channel has finished closing. Which still needs Phoenix.
Ok, thanks. I'll try recovery directly from the seed with Electrum and see how it goes
When you do the test in Electrum, you'll likely see a balance of zero at first. You won't see those channel funds pop up until the node force-closes them and the timelocks expire on-chain, just like Peter mentioned.