🔥 GingerWallet.io | LN Quest ⚡Up to 50 merits

[paco92x]

Hello everyone Im interested in this challenge, is it possible to open a channel in my Phoenix wallet because I never did this before, saw in a few posts back that someone manage to open it.

[apogio]

Hello everyone Im interested in this challenge, is it possible to open a channel in my Phoenix wallet because I never did this before, saw in a few posts back that someone manage to open it.

Have you sent money in your wallet? If yes, it should have already opened a channel for you.

Go to settings ("gear icon"), click on it. Go to "channel management". It will show you a checkbox or something like that with a label "Automatically manage my channels" or "automatic channel management". It should be ticked.

[POPOLUV]

once I am ready and set up, I will surely let you know in case there are things that will get me confusing. I plead for some days though.

[paco92x]

Have you sent money in your wallet? If yes, it should have already opened a channel for you.

I'm trying to find a way to send some Bitcoin from one of my wallets to Phoenix wallet but it seams not to support Bolt12 payments. I guess that's
the problem because it telling me that I have any invalid address.

[apogio]

I'm trying to find a way to send some Bitcoin from one of my wallets to Phoenix wallet but it seams not to support Bolt12 payments. I guess that's
the problem because it telling me that I have any invalid address.

Hmm... sounds strange.

In fact, to use Phoenix as a lightning wallet, you firstly need to add funds on-chain.

Have you tried getting an "on-chain"  address from phoenix? On the bottom of the app when you click send, there must be 2 options: one with a lightning icon and one with a chain icon. Click on the chain icon. The address you will see will be in the format "bc1q...."

If the problem persists, please add more details.

[pawanjain]

Update: Due to frequent powercuts in my area I lost some progress made and had to reindex the blockchain.
I don't have a power backup that keeps my node running continuously but I will do that later when I have that capability.
I am currently at 91% and still syncing. Will update here once the sync is completed. Thanks.

Interesting. Have you considering using a RAID configuration for your hard disk? That should at least prevent disk corruption since only one of the disks will have a corrupted write. But maybe it won't.

Bitcoin score doesn't have a good way of making data backups while the software is online.

I am sorry but I guess I have disappointed you. So long story short, this is what happened.
Ever since I made a post on this thread, I started downloading the blocks on my pi 400 with 1.5 TB HDD.
Although my internet connection was good, it took 3-5 days approximately to download the block data.
I live in an area where there are frequent power cuts (once every 2-3 days) for short durations (1-2 hours) for load balancing and I dont really have an inverter yet.

So as the blocks were getting downloaded there used to be a power cut and I would lose progress and even corrupt my HDD few times.
I tried tweaking some settings, shifted the entire setup to my laptop as well but the download was really slow.
I am not left with any option now and I guess, I wouldn't be able to download the entire blockchain.

P.S: I had tried downloading all the blocks at least 10+ times but lost it every time to the power cuts.

[NotATether]

P.S: I had tried downloading all the blocks at least 10+ times but lost it every time to the power cuts.

I know it is not recommended, but if you're still interested I can give you a torrent link of a copy of the blockchain (in pruned mode, about 20GB).

[pawanjain]

P.S: I had tried downloading all the blocks at least 10+ times but lost it every time to the power cuts.

I know it is not recommended, but if you're still interested I can give you a torrent link of a copy of the blockchain (in pruned mode, about 20GB).

I think I can go with pruned mode without the torrent link too but as you know it isn't recommended I didn't consider opting for it.
While I'll not give up so quickly and I'll keep trying, I just cannot commit anything at the moment.
I'll explore more options on this and "when" I have downloaded it completely, the first think I'll do is update this thread.

[Satofan44]

Great challenge that I plan on picking up when I meet the age requirement!  

I'm disappointed with the number of successful participants given the number of months that this has been running. Is Lightning still that hard to set up or is something else the problem for the lack of interest? I've seen that users have reported issues with individual wallet providers, but I am wondering about the overall difficulty for users that are not that good with technology.

[NotATether]

Great challenge that I plan on picking up when I meet the age requirement!  

I'm disappointed with the number of successful participants given the number of months that this has been running. Is Lightning still that hard to set up or is something else the problem for the lack of interest? I've seen that users have reported issues with individual wallet providers, but I am wondering about the overall difficulty for users that are not that good with technology.

To me, it seems that the number one reason people don't run a lightning node is because it's too hard for them. Granted, it's not simply an .exe file you download from a website and then run.

Generally speaking, Nobody has tried to make a wallet/node that's super user friendly, besides Alby.

[Satofan44]

Great challenge that I plan on picking up when I meet the age requirement!  

I'm disappointed with the number of successful participants given the number of months that this has been running. Is Lightning still that hard to set up or is something else the problem for the lack of interest? I've seen that users have reported issues with individual wallet providers, but I am wondering about the overall difficulty for users that are not that good with technology.

To me, it seems that the number one reason people don't run a lightning node is because it's too hard for them. Granted, it's not simply an .exe file you download from a website and then run.

Generally speaking, Nobody has tried to make a wallet/node that's super user friendly, besides Alby.

That makes me want to try to do this earlier. I guess I could do it now and apply for the merits later when my account is old enough as long as the node is still running? I hope that I can manage it.

How do I run a node?

Perhaps the most important question of all in this topic. There are many software you can use to run your node, along with tutorials, such as:

- LND, C-lightning, or eclair (on Umbrel and Start9) Note: You will only receive stage 1 merit if you run one of these yourself.
- Electrum trampolines
- Breez app on Google Play or the App Store
- Alby Hub
- Phoenix Wallet
- Muun app
- LNDhub
- Ride the Lightning
- Raspiblitz
- Rent one from Bitnoder, Voltage, MyNode, or Alby.

By the way, wouldn't it be good to include links to all of these wallets in the OP? Like you link Alby?  

[LoyceV]

P.S: I had tried downloading all the blocks at least 10+ times but lost it every time to the power cuts.

You need a laptop instead of a pi. It probably depends on where you live, but here second hand laptops can be pretty cheap.

[pawanjain]

P.S: I had tried downloading all the blocks at least 10+ times but lost it every time to the power cuts.

You need a laptop instead of a pi. It probably depends on where you live, but here second hand laptops can be pretty cheap.

I guess the reason you are suggesting for a laptop is because of higher CPU processing power and you are right there.
I spent some time on understanding on how the bitcoin core syncs the blocks and then I found out that the speed depends on CPU, HDD/SSD and RAM.
While the frequent power cuts were a major issue in my scenario, it has slightly decreased now.

Since I also have a laptop (AMD Ryzen 5, 8 GB RAM) and a desktop (AMD Ryzen 5, 16 GB RAM), I tried running bitcoin core on both of them and the desktop was obviously better.
The main bottleneck in my system setup is that I am using a HDD for storing block data.
The read/write is not that great and so the disk utilization is always at 100% which is why the blocks are downloading slowly.

I have somehow managed to reach 86% of the sync process and now syncing has become even more slower.
The reason is because of the huge number of transactions included in every block in the recent years.
Hopefully, if everything goes right, I might be able to sync all the blocks in about a week.

[LoyceV]

I guess the reason you are suggesting for a laptop is because of higher CPU processing power and you are right there.

No, I suggested a laptop because of the battery. If you have frequent power outages, at least a laptop can shut down gracefully.

The main bottleneck in my system setup is that I am using a HDD for storing block data.
The read/write is not that great and so the disk utilization is always at 100% which is why the blocks are downloading slowly.

Block data isn't the problem, chainstate is. If you can put that directory on an SSD, things will go much smoother.

[pawanjain]

I guess the reason you are suggesting for a laptop is because of higher CPU processing power and you are right there.

No, I suggested a laptop because of the battery. If you have frequent power outages, at least a laptop can shut down gracefully.

I see, yeah that makes sense and I tried that too but the sync progress was slower on my laptop when compared to desktop and so I chose to stick with desktop.
Also, I was concerned about my laptop for such a long uptime. I don't want it to be cooked 
But as I am nearing to 90% I will switch to laptop itself. I don't want to risk losing the progress coming so far.

The main bottleneck in my system setup is that I am using a HDD for storing block data.
The read/write is not that great and so the disk utilization is always at 100% which is why the blocks are downloading slowly.

Block data isn't the problem, chainstate is. If you can put that directory on an SSD, things will go much smoother.

I only have about 100 GB of SSD space (out of the 256 GB) that I can use but since the datadir is 600 GB+ I am continuing to use HDD.
I know SSD would have made the syncing a lot faster but I don't have a 1TB SSD.

[LoyceV]

Also, I was concerned about my laptop for such a long uptime. I don't want it to be cooked  

I've been cooking my laptop for over a decade. But it was Intel, which usually is less power hungry than AMD.

I only have about 100 GB of SSD space (out of the 256 GB) that I can use but since the datadir is 600 GB+ I am continuing to use HDD.

Can you spare 12 GB for chainstate? Depending on your OS, you can probably symlink chainstate (or blocks!) to the correct disk. So:
chainstate: SSD
blocks: HDD
This makes a huge difference!

[pawanjain]

Also, I was concerned about my laptop for such a long uptime. I don't want it to be cooked  

I've been cooking my laptop for over a decade. But it was Intel, which usually is less power hungry than AMD.

I only have about 100 GB of SSD space (out of the 256 GB) that I can use but since the datadir is 600 GB+ I am continuing to use HDD.

Can you spare 12 GB for chainstate? Depending on your OS, you can probably symlink chainstate (or blocks!) to the correct disk. So:
chainstate: SSD
blocks: HDD
This makes a huge difference!

No wonder you are a genius LoyceV. This actually worked !!!
I did the symlink for chainstate folder to my SSD and now syncing progress is super fast.
I wish I knew this earlier, I would have probably completed the task mentioned in OP by now.
Thanks again. Willing to learn a lot from you.

P.S: I am back on track @NotATether

[NotATether]

P.S: I am back on track @NotATether

Great! Please report back when your node is synced.

[bitterbit]

You need sats to run a node
Around 5-10 btc to run a successful node.
There is balancing issues and node getting offline.

How will that 10 btc be setup without risks?

OP should mention that risk is involved including losing all bitcoins.

[Satofan44]

You need sats to run a node
Around 5-10 btc to run a successful node.
There is balancing issues and node getting offline.

How will that 10 btc be setup without risks?

$5-$10 in BTC? Maybe. 5-10 BTC? No.

OP should mention that risk is involved including losing all bitcoins.

It seems that you are spamming and have not read anything at all. 

Read This Before Replying:

• Don't try to do silly things with your node that will cause your channel funds to be lost. I will not be liable for lost funds.