If you are a pleb like me, and you like zapping sats over Lightning, but you are NOT technically savvy, the last few years have been R-O-U-G-H.
I don’t know if anyone remembers, but back in 2020-1, there was huge momentum with self-ran LND nodes, hosted over Umbrel when they initially launched. There were other node-in-one services around as well, like MyNode and a bunch of other ones, all equally good. We were all tinkering and opening channels with each other, there was real buzz and excitement around it. It felt like what ordinals was like a few months ago.
Then, it allegedly turned out LND was not on our side, and had the WEF pulling strings, despite their vehement denial. So, like any responsible pleb, I closed all my channels, removed LND and the whole stack of apps, and gave them the middle finger.
But the problem remained. How to use lightning? I tried running CLN (used to be c-lightning), but back then they did not have any implementation with the node services, so unless you were to spin up your own node and build every piece software from scratch from source, you simply had no choice but to go with wallets like Phoenix. I had never opened github in my life, much less interface with command lines nor compiled anything from source. That was a no-go. So I ran to Phoenix.
Phoenix was not ideal, but at least it was non-custodial. Besides, you did not have to manage channels, a win-win according to my lazy self. ACINQ, the company that runs Eclair and Phoenix, seemed to be advancing the right tech, like incorporating splicing and announcing their intention to have BOLT12, something LND is still dragging their feet about today. CLN eventually launched a GUI app for the node-in-one services. And it looks great, but to this date, it doesn’t have a one-click backup option, which is why I didn’t feel safe putting my corn on there. So yeah, I got really comfortable and complacent.
Well, we all know what happened next. First, Wallet of Satoshi, then Phoenix voluntarily left the US, while all the mixing services got shut down. And this is just the first salvo. Things are only going to get more draconian from here, or has the potential to be. They are coming for everything they can put their chokehold on, including things that need centralized servers like LNURL. It was naive to think we could rely on 3rd party-ran lightning nodes, and the bankers would just take it sitting down.
There is no choice left. Much like the Fellowship of the Ring, which unsuccessfully tried the path South to Rohan, then was equally foiled over the frigid Pass of Caradhras, there was only one option left: The Mines of Linux and the creatures hiding beneath the shadows of the Command Line Interface (CLI).
In Part 2, I will list a compilation of everything you will need to build a node from scratch, compile most everything from source, with step by step instructions from the many wonderful developers and shadowy supercoders out there. I am not saying that any competent monkey could do it, but it's close enough. Remember, Gandalf is victorious, sort of. And once your are done, you can start using BOLT12 right away; it has been fantastic to receive my mining rewards over BOLT 12. So if you are mining with Ocean, you have extra incentives.
To be continued...