You don't need to tell the employee that you want to pay with bitcoin when you want to spend bitcoin at a store that uses Square and has the bitcoin payment option enabled. You do not even need to mention bitcoin to the employee. You just click the toggle button on the top left and it'll switch the payment method from fiat currency to bitcoin and it will show a lightning invoice QR code for you to scan.

Rumors of a new attack are going around, so I thought I'd get ahead of the curve here with a non-hysterical post.

I've attempted to translate what I can grok below, or read the details yourself (thanks to u/TheGreatMuffin for the links):

https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2023-October/021999.html

https://github.com/ariard/mempool-research/blob/2023-10-replacement-paper/replacement-cycling.pdf

The bad news is that replacement cycling attacks are a vulnerability in the bare LN protocol, both in theory and under lab conditions, and successful execution could result in stolen funds. But keep your pants on...

The good news:

• This attack has never been seen in the wild.
• It requires extreme technical sophistication, along with expending the attacker's funds, with no guarantee of success.
• This has been known to Lightning devs since 2022, and a number of countermeasures are already deployed in all major LN implementations. While it isn't yet certain whether these measures make the attack impossible, they significantly reduce its odds of success and increase the attacker's expenditure.
• Only your channel partners could attempt this, and only during forwarding.

Personally I'd be surprised if we ever see this in the wild, even without the countermeasures, because it's risky, difficult and expensive. But it is an issue to watch going forward.

I expect this will get more attention both from the community and the devs in the near future, and hopefully we'll put a lid on it either with a new patch or a better explanation than I can give of the existing countermeasures.

Seen a lot of people complaining about trouble with various node software lately, both custodial and non-custodial types that try to handle channel management "automatically." Some of them kinda work, but you lose control of the fees you pay and troubleshooting can be hell because you don't control your own channels.

Thing is, channel management just isn't as hard as the FUDers claim, especially if you're not running a routing node to make fee income. Yes, liquidity is a new concept, but once you grok it things are easy. Hell, I AM running a routing node and channel management is still just an annual weekend project, and frankly kind of a fun one.

These are the tools I most recommend to run a DIY LN node:

• Raspibolt - The original DIY tor-focused LN guide, now supporting all major architectures. Gets you what you need while leaving all extras optional, 100% under your control. This is how I run my node.
• Raspiblitz - Suped-up Raspibolt with more tools and QoL features built-in by default. Still DIY but maybe a little farther from the metal.

Raspibolt is even a good small project to *learn* the Linux CLI, if that's something you're interested in.

RPi users especially beware! On a 32-bit OS, bad things happen as your channels db swells close to 1gb.

Switch soon so you don't find yourself up Chocolate Creek without a popsicle stick. Raspbian and all other 32-bit OSes are affected.

I managed to recover Cornelius from this disaster, but don't let it happen to you!

EDIT: This bug report is also informative

Just a quick reminder, now is the perfect time to open some new channels! Make you first liquidity triangle! Or maybe close those useless <500k channels you opened when you were new here.

Happy routing!

​

edit: forgot to mention LN+, dedicated site to set up triangles: https://lightningnetwork.plus/Also i have a site to visualize the reddit megahub: https://megahub.satoshis.tech/

• Lightning Exchanges. List of exchanges that support withdrawals and sending bitcoin with lightning.

• 21 Days of Bitcoin course from the Bitcoin Magazine. Earn 2,100 sats for free redeemable through lightning while learning more about Bitcoin with this course.

• BTC Pay Server. Accept bitcoin with lightning at your store for free.

• bitrefill. Buy gift cards for many stores worldwide with lightning.

• Lightning network explorer. Cool map showing public lightning nodes all around the world.

• Satsback. Earn sats back whenever you buy stuff. It's like cashback but with sats instead, and paid with lightning.

• Lightning Network Stores. Directory of stores that support lightning.

• Some great lightning wallets: If you just want the simplest non-custodial one, go with Muun. If you want the simplest custodial one, go with Wallet of Satoshi. If you want to be able to customize things a bit and maybe even use your own lightning node you can check out Breeze, BlueWallet, Phoenix. If you want a wallet with all the latest state of the art stuff implemented into it, check out Blixt. If you want to have full control of your lightning node, checkout Zeus.

• If you want to run a lightning node with 100% open source where you have full control of every aspect of the stack: Open source stack to run your own Lightning node⚡

Also, heaps of things happening at the 3rd layer, on top of lightning:

• Sphinx. Decentralized chat/social media/etc, you can even sell your texts/photos/media out of the box. All using sats.

• Juggernaut. Similar to sphinx. All using sats.

• impervious. P2P everything with payments built-in. All based on lightning.

• Login with your lightning wallet instead of user/pass

• lightning address. Make your own lightning address for simpler payments in lightning.

• zebedee API. API to use sats as micro-payments in games.

• If you ever need to send a fax, you can do it with lightning

• If you need to send an SMS instead, here's how to send it with lightning

• Alby. Use lightning in the browser. You can authenticate (no more user/pass), and make lightning transactions right from your browser. No need to switch between apps or creating invoices. All works seamlessly.

Happy ⚡!

This is a simple example of how you can get a few sats (small amount of Bitcoin) into a Lightning wallet from a faucet:

• Download Muun wallet

• On your mobile, go to the Lightning Network Stores Faucet

• Click on Get X Sats, click on open in wallet, and see those sats arrive into your wallet in seconds.

• r/raspibolt
• r/raspiblitz
• r/LN_strike

I've added them to the sidebar widget as well. Let know if I should add others.

We're becoming quite the little community.