After many years of running a bitcoin node, (just for fun / personal interest), I finally decided to install lnd on the node and operate my own lightning node.

Why? Partly, it's because I finally found the time to do it. But also partly, I wasn't too happy with some of my previous Lightning wallet experiences. Either I ran into bugs, or the apps would get shut down for U.S. users due to government shenanigans.

All the while, my stash at SN was sitting at over the limit, and I didn't have anywhere to send those sats to.

So all of that finally gave me the motivation to set up LN. It wasn't too difficult of an experience., though I did everything from scratch from the command line. I prefer to do it that way because it helps me understand how the software actually works. The fine folks at raspibolt.org have provided very clear instructions, I only had to change a few things related to pointing things to the correct paths.

I think the whole thing only took a couple of hours. It probably took longer than it should have because I had to debug parts of the setup due to a different directory structure than what my instructions assumed.

Once it was all set up, I opened a couple of channels, one of course being to Stacker.News. I purchased an Amazon gift card via Bitrefill and the payment was nearly instantaneous, and now I have both outbound and inbound capacity. Of course, I withdrew some of my stack from SN so as to bring it below the maximum limit and now everything is happy and as it should be.

The way I see it, there were two main benefits to doing this.

• First, I no longer have to rely on third party apps to make or receive lightning payments. I am now in full control over my own lightning node.
• Second, I have a better understanding of how lightning works under the hood. Using command line to execute each step of connecting to peer, opening channel, sending payment, receiving payment, and checking balances really improved my grasp of how the network functions.