Plugins for Core-Lightning

Community curated plugins for Core-Lightning.

Available plugins

Name	Short description
autopilot	An autopilot that suggests channels that should be established
backup	A simple and reliable backup plugin
boltz-channel-creation	A Core-Lightning plugin for Boltz Channel Creation Swaps
btcli4j	A Bitcoin Backend to enable safely the pruning mode, and support also rest APIs.
commando	Authorize peers to run commands on your node, and running commands on them.
csvexportpays	A plugin that exports all payments to a CSV file
currencyrate	A plugin to convert other currencies to BTC using web requests
donations	A simple donations page to accept donations from the web
drain	Draining, filling and balancing channels with automatic chunks.
event-websocket	Exposes notifications over a Websocket
feeadjuster	Dynamic fees to keep your channels more balanced
go-lnmetrics.reporter	Collect and report of the lightning node metrics
graphql	Exposes the Core-Lightning API over graphql
invoice-queue	Listen to lightning invoices from multiple nodes and send to a redis queue for processing
lightning-qt	A bitcoin-qt-like GUI for lightningd
listmempoolfunds	Track unconfirmed wallet deposits
monitor	helps you analyze the health of your peers and channels
noise	Chat with your fellow node operators
paythrough	Pay an invoice through a specific channel, regardless of better routes
persistent-channels	Maintains a number of channels to peers
poncho	Turns CLN into a hosted channels provider
probe	Regularly probes the network for stability
prometheus	Lightning node exporter for the prometheus timeseries server
pruning	This plugin manages pruning of bitcoind such that it can always sync
rebalance	Keeps your channels balanced
reckless	An experimental plugin manager (search/install plugins)
requestinvoice	Http server to request invoices
sauron	A Bitcoin backend relying on Esplora's API
sitzprobe	A Lightning Network payment rehearsal utility
sparko	RPC over HTTP with fine-grained permissions, SSE and spark-wallet support
summary	Print a nice summary of the node status
trustedcoin	Replace your Bitcoin Core with data from public block explorers
webhook	Dispatches webhooks based from event notifications
watchtower	Watchtower client for The Eye of Satoshi
zmq	Publishes notifications via ZeroMQ to configured endpoints
nloop	Generic Lightning Loop for boltz

Installation

To install and activate a plugin you need to stop your lightningd and restart it with the plugin argument like this:

lightningd --plugin=/path/to/plugin/directory/plugin_file_name.py

Notes:

• The plugin_file_name.py must have executable permissions: chmod a+x plugin_file_name.py
• A plugin can be written in any programming language, as it interacts with lightningd purely using stdin/stdout pipes.

Automatic plugin initialization

Alternatively, especially when you use multiple plugins, you can copy or symlink all plugin directories into your ~/.lightning/plugins directory. The daemon will load each executable it finds in sub-directories as a plugin. In this case you don't need to manage all the --plugin=... parameters.

Dynamic plugin initialization

Most of the plugins can be managed using the RPC interface. Use

lightning-cli plugin start /path/to/plugin/directory/plugin_file_name

to start it, and

lightning-cli plugin stop /path/to/plugin/directory/plugin_file_name

to stop it.

As a plugin developer this option is configurable with all the available plugin libraries, and defaults to true.

PYTHONPATH and pyln

To simplify plugin development you can rely on pyln-client for the plugin implementation, pyln-proto if you need to parse or write lightning protocol messages, and pyln-testing in order to write tests. These libraries can be retrieved in a number of different ways:

• Using pip tools: pip3 install pyln-client pyln-testing
• Using the PYTHONPATH environment variable to include your clightning's shipped pyln-* libraries:

export PYTHONPATH=/path/to/lightnind/contrib/pyln-client:/path/to/lightnind/contrib/pyln-testing:$PYTHONPATH

Writing tests

The pyln-testing library provides a number of helpers and fixtures to write tests. While not strictly necessary, writing a test will ensure that your plugin is working correctly against a number of configurations (both with and without DEVELOPER, COMPAT and EXPERIMENTAL_FEATURES), and more importantly that they will continue to work with newly release versions of Core-Lightning.

Writing a test is as simple as this:

• The framework will look for unittest filenames starting with test_.
• The test functions should also start with test_.

from pyln.testing.fixtures import *

pluginopt = {'plugin': os.path.join(os.path.dirname(__file__), "YOUR_PLUGIN.py")}

def test_your_plugin(node_factory, bitcoind):
    l1 = node_factory.get_node(options=pluginopt)
    s = l1.rpc.getinfo()
    assert(s['network'] == 'regtest') # or whatever you want to test

Tests are run against pull requests, all commits on master, as well as once ever 24 hours to test against the latest master branch of the Core-Lightning development tree.

Running tests locally can be done like this: (make sure the PYTHONPATH env variable is correct)

pytest YOUR_PLUGIN/YOUR_TEST.py

Python plugins specifics

Additional dependencies

Additionally, some Python plugins come with a requirements.txt which can be used to install the plugin's dependencies using the pip tools:

pip3 install -r requirements.txt

Note: You might need to also specify the --user command line flag depending on your environment.

Minimum supported Python version

The minimum supported version of Python for this repository is currently 3.6.x (23 Dec 2016). Python plugins users must ensure to have a version >= 3.6. Python plugins developers must ensure their plugin to work with all Python versions >= 3.6.

More Plugins from the Community

• @conscott's plugins
• @renepickhardt's plugins
• @rsbondi's plugins
• Core-Lightning plugins emulating commands of LND (lncli)

Plugin Builder Resources

• Description of the plugin API
• C Plugin API by @rustyrussell
• Python Plugin API & RPC Client (PyPI) by @cdecker and a video tutorial by @renepickhardt
• Go Plugin API & RPC Client by @niftynei
• C++ Plugin API & RPC Client by @darosior
• Javascript Plugin API & RPC Client by @darosior
• TypeScript Plugin API & RPC Client by @AaronDewes
• Java Plugin API & RPC Client by @vincenzopalazzo
• C# Plugin Guideline and example project by @joemphilips
• Kotlin plugin guideline and example by @vincenzopalazzo