How does lightning work? Come dig deep into the spec protocol with a lightning spec expert. We’ll learn how channels are opened, how payments are made and accounted for, how force-closes work, what onions are, and how the routing table is built across the network with gossip. Experts only.
Want to really understand how lightning works? Join us for an in-depth and hands on, project based investigation of building lightning channels, making payments, finding routes, and making onions. By the end of this class you’ll have implemented a hodl-invoice plugin, bolt11 invoice decoder, an onion packager, and a routing algorithm that can parse through gossip to find a route. Exercises in this class will be in Python using Jupyter notebooks. Nix strongly recommended for running the notebooks.
You must have a strong understanding of Bitcoin transaction basics, such as:
Script
Multisig
Outputs + Inputs
Transaction Fees
SegWit
These topics are covered in our flagship Transactions Deep Dive class.
This class will give you an overview of the Lightning BOLT specs: what they cover, how Lightning contracts work, how payments move through Lightning, and how nodes hide and reveal themselves via gossip.
How are channels made? How do funds move between peers in the network? This is the work that HTLCs do.
How do payments move through the lightning network? We’ll take a look at the data structures that hide their contents
We’ll talk about finding routes through the graph for payments and how gossip works to help nodes find routes.
We’ll build on top of Core Lightning, using RPCs and plugins for class exercises
Build a plugin to hold an htlc and route a payment.
We’ll write a parse for Bolt11 specs and discuss how Bolt12 upgrades payments on Lightning
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Whether you're new to Bitcoin development or looking to go deeper, our courses give you the technical foundation to build, verify, and contribute with confidence.