Who wants to take over the Lightning Shell?
3204 sats \ 2100 boost \ 14 comments \ @ibz 19 Jul 2022 bitcoin
Back when I first started learning about Lightning and running my own node, I made this thing called "the Lightning Shell". It was more of an exercise of 1) trying out all these neat tools that help one manage a node and 2) publishing an app in the Umbrel App Store.
In the mean time I moved on to other things. These days I am mostly busy developing the Plebeian Market, and doing other things on the side.
I feel sad that I simply don't have the time to update the Lightning Shell anymore, while I think it is a great tool for node operators.
I would love to simply have somebody else take it over from where it is, and at least keep the apps up to date, fix bugs here and there, but ideally to take it to the next level!
I suppose one could also build a revenue stream around it, if for example the app would ask people to donate sats (value4value business model). I think it has quite a few users on Umbrel (GitHub says 6.85k total downloads for the packages), and it could potentially be ported to Start9 Embassy as well. I just don't feel like trying to monetize it given that the expectation is that it would be up to date, which I am not doing anymore.
What I offer: transfer the GitHub repo, the website repo and the domain name.
What I expect: somebody motivated enough to keep it going. The person needs to be a node operator that loves spending time with these command line tools and also have some Docker experience.
www: https://lightningshell.app/ GitHub: https://github.com/ibz/lightning-shell
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212 sats \ 1 reply \ @pillar 19 Jul 2022
I have been a user of lightning shell for months. So let me starting by giving you many, many thanks for building it. It has helped a lot in running my node.
It's great that you are realistic about your capacity and that you try to transfer the project instead of simply letting it decay. I hope you can find someone talented to take over. Thanks for making this last effort.
Can we all get some sats here people? Guys like ibz deserve them.
And good luck with Plebeian Market.
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141 sats \ 0 replies \ @ibz OP 19 Jul 2022
Thanks! Building it has helped me a lot - that's how I started getting down the Lightning rabbit hole, and I am sure there are many more that it helped along the way (who might have never ended up trying all these tools in the first place).
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201 sats \ 0 replies \ @derekross 19 Jul 2022
Thanks for all of your hard work on these applications. I use Lightning shell every time I want to launch BOS and I just listed something on plebian.market yesterday.
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101 sats \ 1 reply \ @random_ 19 Jul 2022
What is the update process like? The time commitment to keeping it updated?
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10 sats \ 0 replies \ @ibz OP 19 Jul 2022
Very good questions.
It's hard for me to answer because of two reasons:
  1. I've always kept adding more features as well, I never thought about the minimum required time to keep it updated.
  2. It's been a while, so probably some stuff might break now. The more often the updates, the less issues.
That being said, the process is quite simple. It's just one Dockerfile (a template actually) that builds for two separate Debian versions - bullseye and buster (to be used on Citadel and Umbrel) and two architectures.
There are constants for Bitcoin, LND and BoS versions, and the rest of the apps are git submodules that require being updated to the last tags.
These steps can probably be automated quite easily.
The actual builds for buster/bullseye (which basically means Umbrel/Citadel) and architectures (x64/arm64) are done by GitHub jobs on push, but I always prefer to do extra builds locally, because some errors always occur on updates, and I prefer to keep the git history clean and only push what kinda works. But I guess this is not a requirement if somebody else takes over. SO it could work without local builds in theory.
So, usually I do one build locally that I then push to an Umbrel and test, and I assume that if this works, it is very likely to also work on x64 Umbrel and Citadel...
This whole part could arguably be also automated, probably with simply adding some tests that would run as GitHub jobs after build on all platforms...
What can also be considered is dropping some apps that are not really relevant. I loved including some nice extra stuff like csview or gping, because I thought they are at least remotely useful to a node operator, and they were a nice touch, but of course - the more you add, the more trouble you'll have. If the future releases would be limited to just the Lightning stuff, complexity of updates would be certainly lower.
I guess ultimately it would be nice to just find somebody that either 1) is a node operator and wants to do this out of passion OR 2) has another interest in doing this (for example selling a node solution and thus having an indirect benefit from this).
Of course everything could be simplified and reduced to the bare minimum, plus with some extra automation the time required would decrease. But it would also be nice to have somebody that actually loves this and wants to take it further - not from pure altruism, but either for learning or for some other (indirect) benefit. So that person would give more than the bare minimum required to update the apps to this.
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100 sats \ 0 replies \ @KingZing 19 Jul 2022
I love the Plebeian Market, it is incredible! thanks for all your apps
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0 sats \ 2 replies \ @SoulOnChain 21 Jul 2022
First, thanks for building it I found it very useful. I can commit some of my time to keeping it updated and fixing some bugs. After handing it over, would you still be available to help out and guide me if I got stuck?
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101 sats \ 1 reply \ @ibz OP 21 Jul 2022
Hey, see the comment below about selling it. I decided that I had the wrong attitude from the beginning. I'll set up an auction on Plebeian Market - so the person taking over has to be willing to part some sats (skin in the game).
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100 sats \ 0 replies \ @SoulOnChain 21 Jul 2022
I see, no problem. My first and final offer is 50,000 sats. Probably on the low side but I have stacking priorities lol
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0 sats \ 3 replies \ @mikhael 19 Jul 2022
Sell it on Microaquire instead.
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0 sats \ 2 replies \ @ibz OP 19 Jul 2022
I don't want to sell it. I'll either find the next person to pick it up, or let it die...
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100 sats \ 1 reply \ @mikhael 20 Jul 2022
Interesting attitude, don't understand it personally - but you do you. See if someone would buy it for 1 BTC, what's wrong with that. Stack some sats dawg.
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150 sats \ 0 replies \ @ibz OP 20 Jul 2022
Good point. You just made me change my mind. I'll auction it on Plebeian Market then. I guess capitalism will win, eventually. Communism just doesn't work.
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @BlokchainB 19 Jul 2022
Interesting just now hearing about this. But looks very technical
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