This guide is for building and using c-lightning on the Liquid sidechain to create Lightning payment channels. With these payment channels, users can transact Liquid-BTC (bitcoin transferred to the Liquid sidechain) instantly and privately.

Support for Confidential Transactions and Issued Assets is planned, so users will be able to transact any asset issued on the Liquid Network in a Lightning payment channel — such as tokenized fiat, crypto assets, attested assets (e.g. gold coins), or completely new assets. Also, support for swapping on-chain BTC for L-BTC in a payment channel is being worked on.

Using c-lightning on Liquid is practically the same procedure as using it on the Bitcoin mainnet, so if you’re familiar with that then the steps here will be easy to follow (although they’re fairly easy regardless :-)).

Sections

Installing the required software

Running lightningd

Opening a Lightning payment channel

Transacting L-BTC via a Lightning payment

Closing the payment channel