Bitcoin Lightning Network Node Easy Setup Tutorial for Windows Desktop Users — A how to guide
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.
Keep in mind, this is currently for testnet BTC ONLY right now. I will update the guide when you can use real BTC :)
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.
Part 0: Setup (5-10 minutes, easy)
**EDIT**: If you do not want to use the Zap application, and only want to try the Lightning App desktop, you can download the Windows binaries here: https://github.com/lightninglabs/lightning-app/releases/download/v0.1.4-alpha/Lightning-win32-x64v0.1.4.zipSimply download, extract and run “lightning.exe” and it should work. You can then skip directly to Part 2.
We’re going to need a few programs to actually compile the LN apps for us, because they aren’t pre-compiled in a nice beautiful .exe yet. This isn’t too hard though!
Download Node.js for Windows and install: https://nodejs.org/en/download/
Download Git for Windows and install: https://git-scm.com/download/win
Download Yarn for Windows and run the installer: https://yarnpkg.com/lang/en/docs/install/#windows-tab
Download Windows Visual C++ Build Tools 2015 and install: http://landinghub.visualstudio.com/visual-cpp-build-tools
After installing, go ahead and restart your computer.
After rebooting, launch the command prompt (Start →CMD.exe). Type node -v, and hit enter. Then type git — version, and hit enter. Finally, type yarn -v, and hit enter. If you see any type of version output for all 3, then we’re good to go!
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