It has been ~3 weeks since my last post here about my new Lightning Explorer (Exponential Layers), and I wanted to say thank you again to everyone for your feedback and kind words.
Previous Feedback and Updates
The last round of feedback and everyone using the explorer has been extremely helpful. A couple of great asks and ideas summarized from the last post and some other mediums have been:
- Node search on home page
- Node search by alias
- Channel short id display and search
- Node distribution displayed geographically
- Tools for finding new channel partners
- Channels categorized by size, purpose, and markets
- Notifications for channel opens/closures
- Notifications for node status changes
Over the last two weeks, I’ve made updates and releases to begin accommodating the above starting with basics:
Node search is throughout the app, with typeahead alias search functionality and channel short id present on each channel page.
Node Customization Feature
To help work down the path of providing additional node data, categories, and channel partners, a new option for node verification and customization is available to help you brand your lightning node. Sign a login message to verify your node and then add custom details that can be shared to everyone using the public explorer including:
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Custom Node Avatar Upload
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Email, Twitter Handle, and Website details
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Any custom node info
No account is needed and the details can all be seen here. Please let me know if there are additional details you would like to add or customize for your node display.
Notifications! …on Any Source & Target Node Channels
The latest release feature is one I’m most excited about, which is notifications for any node and channel on the network. There are already fantastic tools that provide rich insight to a specific verified node. This new notification feature offers one more avenue for your node analysis, and also offers the ability to see changing network data, derived at a granular level for any and all nodes and channels on the network.
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Need notifications when any of your channel partners disables a channel or goes offline?
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Want an email when a new channel is opened to your node?
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Want to monitor all new channels setup with ACINQ? Or another node?
These are just a few of the possibilities available with notifications. As someone who is still ramping up on lightning as fast as possible, I have been monitoring channel state changes for large nodes like River, ACINQ, and Wallet of Satoshi to see how frequently the network changes over time - and with what detail.
All data syncs from the lightning network graph every 20 minutes to provide the fastest available changes and notifications on any new, disabled, and closed channels.
Anyone is able to create two custom notification rules here, and I’ve added a doc with more details on the getting started setup.
What’s Up Next?
I am grateful for all of the time everyone has already put in, and I would love to hear any and all feedback, critiques, ideas, or thoughts on these next iterations if these features are of any interest to you.
I’ll be working through additional items on the feedback list above, along with some new premium/paid features, and would love to connect on anything that would be helpful for you with Lightning data and analytics.