Rust Lightning

Rust Lightning (LDK) is a highly performant and flexible implementation of the Lightning Network protocol written in Rust. The primary crate, lightning, is runtime-agnostic, allowing for custom implementations of data persistence, chain interactions, and networking.

• Runtime-agnostic: Provides flexibility in choosing data persistence, chain interactions, and networking.
• BOLT Specifications: Implements all of the BOLT specifications.
• Production Ready: In production use since 2021.
• Security Audited: Regular security audits to ensure safety.

The Rust Lightning project includes several crates:

1. lightning: Core of the LDK library, implementing the Lightning protocol, channel state machine, and on-chain logic. Supports no-std and exposes low-level interfaces.
2. lightning-background-processor: Utilities to perform required background tasks.
3. lightning-block-sync: Utilities for fetching chain data and feeding it into Rust Lightning.
4. lightning-invoice: Data structures for parsing and serializing BOLT #11 Lightning invoices.
5. lightning-net-tokio: Network stack implementation using the Tokio async runtime.
6. lightning-persister: Utilities for managing channel data persistence and retrieval.
7. lightning-rapid-gossip-sync: Client for rapid gossip graph syncing, primarily aimed at mobile clients.

LDK/Rust Lightning allows you to build a Lightning node without needing to handle the complexities of the Lightning state machine, routing, and on-chain punishment code. It provides a clean API for integrating custom features such as chain sync, key management, data storage, and backup logic.

For an out-of-the-box Lightning node based on LDK, see Sensei. LDK provides APIs for:

• On-disk storage: Store channel state in any way you want.
• Blockchain data: Simple API for block headers and transaction information.
• UTXO management: Notifies users when UTXOs are theirs again after channel closure.
• Networking: Default implementation using TCP sockets, with flexibility for custom networking solutions.
• Private keys: Users can provide private keys to LDK in any way they wish.

To build Rust Lightning from source, follow these steps:

1. Clone the repository:

   git clone https://github.com/lightningdevkit/rust-lightning.git
   cd rust-lightning

2. Build the project:

   cargo build --release

To run the tests:

cargo test --all-features

Comprehensive documentation for Rust Lightning is available on docs.rs.

For a high-level API introduction, see ARCH.md.