RUN LND

This is a small side project to sell a limited edition run of some dope shirts, while testing out proof of node ownership with message signing.

This project makes no attempt to be reusable as an eCommerce platform, nor as a gold standard of code quality. It was purely made for fun, and to potentially be used by others as an example of some interactions with an LND node on a production site.

Development

You need to have node >= 8 installed, an LND node with the GRPC API enabled and exposed, and a PostgreSQL database.

• Run yarn to install dependencies
• Run cp .env.example .env and configure the environement variables
• Run yarn dev to have nodemon run and watch for changes

Changes will automatically restart the server and recompile the client code, but there's no hot reloading here. Sorry folks, I'm too lazy.

Production

• Run yarn build to build compiled production code & assets
• Run yarn start to run said code

FAQ

Why not use invoices for proof of node, instead of message signing?

A signed message not only proves that you're running you're node, but that you're running LND. At the time of writing, LND is the only node implementation with message signing, so it was a good proxy for ensuring that the node was an LND node, and not another implementation. And if you're gonna be repping a RUN LND shirt, you'd best be running LND.

Why not use the admin macaroon?

In case the server hosting the site is compromised, the worst someone could do without the admin macaroon is DDOS your node, or generate an annoyingly large number of invoices. It's great that LND allows for you to have a site like this that only needs to accept money without exposing your funds.

Shoutouts

• To Lightning Labs and all of the contributors on LND, it's a mighty fine piece of software
• To the folks at Radar ION for writing a damn good typed RPC library for LND
• To @jamesob and @mikeob for helping test and catching some bugs