306c4aef8e
This commit introduces the initial implementation of the autopilot mode. Autopilot is new mode within lnd that enables automatic channel management. This means that if enabled lnd will attempt to automatically manage channels according to a set of heuristic defined within the main configuration for autopilot.Agent instance. The autopilot.Agent implements a simple closed control loop. It takes in external signals such as wallet balance updates, new open channel, and channels that are now closed the updates its internal state. With each external trigger it will consult the registered AttachmentHeuristic to decide: if it needs to open any more channels, and if so how much it should use to open the channels, ultimately returning a set of recommended AttachmentDirectives. The autopilot.Agent loop will then take those attempt to establish connection, and go back in waiting for a new external signal. With this first implementation the default heuristic is the ConstrainedPrefAttachment implementation of AttachmentHeuristic. Given a min and max channel size, a limit on the number of channels, and the percentage of wallet funds to allocate to channels, it will attempt to execute a heuristic drive by the Barabási–Albert model model in order to attempt to drive the global graph towards a scale free topology. This is commit implements a foundational layer for future simulations, optimization, and additional heuristics.
Lightning Network Daemon
The Lightning Network Daemon (lnd) - is a complete implementation of a
Lightning Network node and currently
deployed on testnet4 - the Bitcoin Test Network. It utilizes an
upcoming upgrade to Bitcoin: Segregated Witness (segwit). The
project's codebase uses the btcsuite set
of Bitcoin libraries, and is currently dependant on btcd.
In the current state lnd is capable of:
- creating channels
- closing channels
- completely managing all channel states (including the exceptional ones!)
- maintaining a fully authenticated+validated channel graph
- performing path finding within the network, passively forwarding incoming payments
- sending outgoing onion-encrypted payments through the network
Lightning Network Specification Compliance
lnd doesn't yet fully conform to the Lightning Network specification
(BOLT's). BOLT stands
for: Basic of Lightning Technologies. The specifications are currently being drafted
by several groups of implementers based around the world including the
developers of lnd. The set of specification documents as well as our
implementation of the specification are still a work-in-progress. With that
said, lnd the current status of lnd's BOLT compliance is:
- BOLT 1: Base Protocol
lndcurrently utilizes a distinct wire format which was created before the emgergence of the current draft of BOLT specifications. We don't have aninitmessage, but we do have analogues to all the other defined message types.
- BOLT 2: Peer Protocol for Channel Management
lndimplements all the functionality defined within the document, however we currently use a different set of wire messages. Additionally,lnduses a distinct commitment update state-machine and doesn't yet support dynamically updating commitment fees.
- BOLT 3: Bitcoin Transaction and Script Formats
lndcurrently uses a commitment design from a prior iteration of the protocol. Revocation secret generation is handled byelkremand our scripts are slightly different.
- BOLT 4: Onion Routing Protocol
- BOLT 5: Recommendations for On-chain Transaction Handling
- BOLT 7: P2P Node and Channel Discovery
- BOLT 8: Encrypted and Authenticated Transport
Installation
In order to build from source, the following build dependencies are required:
-
Go: Installation instructions can be found here.
It is recommended to add
$GOPATH/binto yourPATHat this point. Note: If you are building withGo 1.5, then you'll need to enable the vendor experiment by setting theGO15VENDOREXPERIMENTenvironment variable to1. If you're usingGo 1.6or later, then it is safe to skip this step. -
Glide: This project uses
Glideto manage dependencies as well as to provide reproducible builds. To installGlide, execute the following command (assumes you already have Go properly installed):$ go get -u github.com/Masterminds/glide -
btcd: This project currently requires
btcdwith segwit support, which is not yet merged into the master branch. Instead, roasbeef maintains a fork with his segwit implementation applied. To install, please see the installation instructions.
With the preliminary steps completed, to install lnd, lncli, and all
related dependencies run the following commands:
$ git clone https://github.com/lightningnetwork/lnd $GOPATH/src/github.com/lightningnetwork/lnd
$ cd $GOPATH/src/github.com/lightningnetwork/lnd
$ glide install
$ go install . ./cmd/...
Updating
To update your version of lnd to the latest version run the following
commands:
$ cd $GOPATH/src/github.com/lightningnetwork/lnd
$ git pull && glide install
$ go install . ./cmd/...
Tests
To check that lnd was installed properly run the following command:
go install; go test -v -p 1 $(go list ./... | grep -v '/vendor/')
IRC
- irc.freenode.net
- channel #lnd
- webchat