First on Main Stage at nostr:npub1dwah6u025f2yy9dgwlsndntlfy85vf0t2eze5rdg2mxg99k4mucqxz7c52 Lightning++ Edition: Christian Decker of nostr:npub1jg552aulj07skd6e7y2hu0vl5g8nl5jvfw8jhn6jpjk0vjd0waksvl6n8n with "Running Lightning at Scale".
Discussion
Greenlight is an attempt to onboard new users to Lightning without giving them all the burden of it from the beginning.
The goal is to provide a first onboarding onto Bitcoin ecosystem running the node for the user until he is ready to graduate to self-hosting.
End-user nodes usually check it 3-4 times a day, so the idea is to have node spinning up just once the user comes online to use the node.
Optimization was done on start-up, spinning up in 1s, connecting to peers in a couple and be ready in a short amount of time.
Always-on is an illusion.
Core-lightning architecture:
- Main daemon: lightningd
- Sub-daemons: hsmd, gossipd, connectd, etc.
- Plugins: arbitrary scripts to customize the node.
This follows UNIX philosophy: "Do one thing and do it well".
Blockstream runs many nodes, with no control on any of the funds of the user, nor of his keys:
It's a VLS signer on the user side that talks to hsmd through a proxy to use the node.
On a daily basis, Blockstream consumes around 72 TiB/day of data from the main chain to keep all the nodes up-to-date.
This is done on just two bitcoind instances!