I’ve noticed recently plenty of excitement for layer 2 scaling solutions, like Lightning Network (LN), but a lack of simple documentation for setting things up. While it may seem that using LN on the testnet is for programmers and Linux users only, it’s actually not that difficult. Getting setup with the current LN desktop clients for Windows is actually not too hard, and can be accomplished in about 30 minutes. I was pleasantly surprised.

— UPDATE 2/11/2019: Getting setup on testnet is still quite easy and quick. Continue reading for that; however, if you want MAINNET Lightning Network today, Pierre Rochard has an excellent guide: https://medium.com/lightning-power-users/windows-macos-lightning-network-284bd5034340

If you want to begin experimenting on Windows with testnet ASAP, read on!

What these desktop clients are doing are creating an easy GUI for you to interact with the LND daemon, similar to how Bitcoin Core and Bitcoin Knots help you to interact with bitcoind, the bitcoin daemon. You’ll see later on that both Zap and Lightning-App will display the exact same information albeit with different interfaces.

The goals of this tutorial are:

Installation of Lightning-App or Zap Desktop (leading desktop LN applications)

Open a payment channel

Buy a virtual coffee from Starblocks (starblocks.acinq.co)

Receive a lightning payment

For this tutorial, I will be using a Windows 7 desktop. If you’ve ever sent or received a Bitcoin transaction, you have all the pre-requisite knowledge required to walk through the tutorial.