Lightning Pool

Lightning Pool is a non-custodial, peer-to-peer marketplace that allows node operators that need inbound liquidity to pay node operators with available capital to open channels in their direction while retaining full custody of their funds. Pool’s first product is a Lightning Channel Lease - an inbound channel with a pre-agreed duration.

Efficient capital allocation is one of the most widely felt pain points when using the Lightning Network. Existing node operators do not have access to pricing signals to help determine where in the network their outbound liquidity should be allocated, and new node operators have no way to signal that they need new inbound liquidity. Lightning Pool brings these two sides together into a single market while allowing them to maintain custody of their funds.

Checkout our documentation to learn more. For more technical details, check out the technical white paper.

How it works

Lightning Pool is a non-custodial auction for liquidity where bids are kept private and trades clear periodically. Key aspects of Pool include:

• Periodic clearing - Market does not clear continuously, instead, it clears every block (or after multiple blocks, if there are no bids that match with existing asks).

• Non-custodial - Clients maintain an on-chain account that is a timelocked, 2-of-2 multisig with the auctioneer. These funds are fully in the user’s control at all times.

• Sealed-bid - All orders are submitted off-chain to the auctioneer, so bidders don’t have visibility into the bids of other participants

• Uniform clearing price - All participants in a batch clear at the same price. If your ask is for 2% annualized interest, you will receive >=2%. If you bid 5%, you will pay <=5%.

• Batched execution - Due to the account structure, the auctioneer is able to batch all completed orders into a single transaction, greatly reducing individual chain fees.

Installation

Download the latest binaries from the releases page.

LND

Note that Pool requires lnd to be built with all of its subservers and requires running at least v0.15.4. Download the latest official release binary or build lnd from source by following the installation instructions. If you choose to build lnd from source, use the following command to enable all the relevant subservers:

make install tags="signrpc walletrpc chainrpc invoicesrpc"

Usage

Read our quickstart guide to learn more about how to use Pool.

Marketplace Fee

Fees are calculated based on the amount of liquidity purchased. During the mainnet alpha, fees will range from 5-25 basis points of the matched amount.

Development

The Pool client is currently in early alpha and offers a simple command line application.

The Pool daemon exposes a gRPC API and REST API.

Troubleshooting

Join us on Slack and we'd be happy to help in any way we can. In the meantime please see our FAQs.

Build from source

If you’d prefer to compile from source code, you’ll need at least go 1.18 and make.

Run the following commands to download the code, compile and install Pool:

$ git clone https://github.com/lightninglabs/pool
$ cd pool
$ make install

This will install the binaries into your $GOPATH/bin directory.

Compatibility

Lightning Pool requires lnd version 0.15.4-beta or higher (v0.16.0-beta or later is recommended).