Guide how to fund a LN wallet

This guide is also available in Spanish, here.

Ok, we have new users in the situation that they bought some BTC from exchanges, they withdraw them into their personal BTC onchain wallets, but now they want to use, test, experience using LN (Lightning Network) and making some payments or receive some sats. Also this scenario is good practice in case you will buy from an exchange that support LN.

SCENARIO A – Funding a BW LN wallet:

• You have your BlueWallet (BW) app on your mobile (or Mac Desktop)
• You created an onchain wallet (blue color), you saved the seed in a safe place
• You received from a withdrawal from an exchange some BTC into this wallet

Steps to do next:

• Create a LN wallet, by clicking the “+” button on the main screen on top right
• Select Lightning (yellow)
• Save the backup (the QR code and/or the below address of the lndhub link wallet) in a safe place, out of you mobile, together where you saved that seed for the onchain wallet
• Go to the LN wallet page and below the balance, you have a button “Manage funds”, click it.
• It will appear a menu with:refill – it takes funds directly from your onchain BW wallet, the amount you indicate
• refill with external wallet – it will create an onchain invoice (with the amount you indicate) to be paid with another external personal wallet (try not to use funds directly from an exchange!)
• refill with bank card – it will redirect you to a 3rd party broker that will use your bank card and will charge extra % fees
• refill with exchange – it will redirect to HodlHodl.com exchange and if you have an account there, you can trade directly.
• If you want to receive from an exchange that supports LN withdrawals you can just click receive (in the LN page) and create the invoice with the amount you want to receive. But you should be aware that this invoice will expire in max 1 day, so you should be sure that the exchange will make the payment in that period, otherwise they will get an error.

SCENARIO B – Funding a LNtxBot wallet (imported into BW):

• You have your BlueWallet (BW) app on your mobile (or Mac Desktop)
• You created an onchain wallet (blue color), named BW-O 1
• You received from a withdrawal from an exchange some BTC into this blue wallet
• You have created also a LN wallet (yellow color), named BW-LN 1
• You already have some funds into this BW-LN 1, from the previous scenario

Steps to do next: – Import the LNtxBot wallet from your Telegram account (if you didn’t do it until now)

• go to Telegram and open the chat with @lntxbot
• type in the chat /bluewallet
• it will give you a QR code and a lndhub address to be imported into your BW app, copy the address
• open BW and click on top right the “+” button to create a new wallet
• Choose none of the wallet options, but the last one “Import wallet” at the bottom
• In the text box, paste the lndhub address from Telegram LNtxbot chat and click import.
• Done, put the name to this wallet BW-LNtxbot, so you can differentiate form the main one, created in the scenario A

Fund your BW-LNtxBot wallet:

• Option A – from your own BW-LN 1, in wallet app:Open BW-LNtxBot and click receive button, to create an invoice
• Put the amount and click create invoice
• It will popup a QR code (to be scanned) and a ln invoice code bellow. copy that LN code
• Go back to main screen of BW and open the BW-LN 1 wallet
• Click send and paste the LN code invoice, then click pay. Done you receive the funds
• Option B – from your own BW-LN 1, from Telegram:Go to Telegram and open the chat with @lntxbot
• type in /invoice xxx (where xx is the amount in sats you want to receive)
• it will generate a QR code and a LN code for the invoice
• You can scan the QR with your BW-LN 1 wallet and pay it, or
• You can copy the LN code and go to your BW, open the BW-LN 1 wallet and click send, paste the LN code and pay. Done, you receive the funds in an instant.
• Option C – using your LNurl “donation” page/code from LNtxBotGo to https://lntxbot.bigsun.xyz/@YourUserName (replace “YourUsername” with your nickname from your Telegram account, see the guide here)
• Scan that QR code with your BW-LN 1 wallet and pay it with the amount you want, or
• Copy the LNURL code bellow the QR and paste it into your BW-LN 1 and pay it, adjusting the amount you want
• Done, you will receive the funds in an instant

SCENARIO C – Funding your Phoenix mobile wallet:

• You have funds in any other onchain wallet (Electrum, BW, Ledger, Samourai) or even in an exchange from where you buy some BTC
• You have installed on your mobile the Phoenix wallet (only Android, for iOS use BW or Breez or Muun)
• You created a wallet in Phoenix and saved the seed backup in a safe place

Steps to do next:

• Open Phoenix wallet and click receive
• First time funding it will be onchain, so you will have to move some onchain funds from another onchain wallet to this one
• Once you receive the funds, Phoenix it will open (in backend) LN channels for you, but will charge a 0.1% fee
• Next time when you want to fund this wallet, you don’t need to open channels, the backend will do it automatically
• Once you already have some funds in this wallet, those sats can be used on both onchain and LN as you wish
• Next funding you can choose how to receive the sats, onchain or LN

SCENARIO D – Funding your Electrum desktop wallet:

• You bought some BTC form an exchange, now is time to withdraw them, to your personal private wallet
• Download (optional install) the standalone executable of Electrum wallet
• Create a wallet, standard wallet, save the seed words into a safe place (not on your desktop!), secure the wallet with a strong password

Prepare your Electrum wallet for advanced use:

• Once is open, go to menu – View – Select show addresses, coins, channels
• Go to menu – Wallet information and activate Lightning (if is not already)Optional you can save the MPK (Master Public Key) and Lightning Node ID, together with your seed words
• Go to menu – Preferences - General tab, use base unit BTC (to not have confusions). We use to have BTC as onchain unit and sats for LN. 1 BTC = 100.000.000 sats
• Transactions tab, use Replace-by-fee, advanced preview, use change addresses, spend only confirmed coins
• Fiat tab, select as you wish
• Go to Addresses tab, choose the first or any address from that list and label it (right click and select edit label), as the name of the exchange from where you will receive the funds
• Right click again on the same address and select copy address, or show details (QR code and more details)
• Go to your exchange account and do the process of withdrawal funds to your Electrum address that you chosed and labeled
• Wait for the transaction (tx) to be confirmed. You will see it in the History tab in your Electrum app, how many confirmation have. When is green, is having 6 confirmations and is safe to be used.

Prepare your Electrum wallet for Ligthning use:

• You have 2 modes to use it with LN:A – Opening channels with known nodes (your friends with nodes or well known merchants with public nodes). To activate this mode, you need to go to menu – preferences – Lightning tab and deactivate the check box “Use trampoline routing”. For this mode you will need to know the other part node ID but also you can use random nodes. Electrum will open with the ones that are suitable for you.
• B – Opening trampoline channels (backend of Electrum servers or ACINQ servers) that will open random channels for you. By default, trampoline routing is activated, but just to check, go to menu – prefferences – Lightning tab and put on the check box “Use trampoline routing”.
• Once you have a channel open with a node (it will take 3 confirmations to open the channel) you are ready to spend those sats using LN in Electrum
• Go to Send tab, paste the LN code invoice to be paid or scan with a camera a QR code for a LN invoice
• To receive funds using LN in electrum, you will need to spend some sats (to make space in that newly created channel). A full channel could not receive funds, is like a pocket full of coins. See more details about how LN works here. Electrum LN works in different way than BW or LN node wallet.
• Optional, if you need to receive more funds on LN using Electrum, you can go to the tab Channels, select the desired channel and on top right you have a button “SWAP”. You can swap funds from that LN channel back to your onchain Electrum address and “making some space” intpo that channel to be able to receive from external source. You can adjust the miner fee using the “Static” drop down option and put a lower fee (but not too low!), usually 10-15-20 sats/vB if you are not in a hurry. Once the swap is done, the channel will be “more empty” and can receive funds.
• To receive funds in Electrum LN, go to Receive tab, put a description (it will be public, so don’t put too much details there, just generic for your reference!), the amount in fiat or BTC you want to receive (it will make the conversion automatically based on the fee rate you choose in “Preferences”). One important thing here: select expire never or x days if you don’t expect the tx to be done immediately. Then click on “Lightning” button It will create and invoice and also a QR code to be shared with the other party to pay it. You will see that the invoice will remain in pending in a bottom list and also in the main “History” tab, as pending until is paid.
• NOTE: if you use trampoline channels, it is not necessary to spend or swap funds from these channel in order to be able to receive.

HAPPY LIGHTNING!

DarthCoin guides:

• on Telegram Channel - BTC Guides (EN and ES)
• on Substack - DarthCoin Guides (EN)

If you appreciate DarthCoin guides, you can send some satoshis, to test your new node, using LNurl, another great tool for LN:

• using @LNtxBot Telegram DarthCoin donation page
• or simply send using Lightning Address to darthcoin@lntxbot.com

MAY THE ₿ITCOIN BE WITH YOU!