Lightning Network Discussions

On the bus ride to and from the mine, the group talked about crypto a lot.  That evening, I heard about the Lightning Network (LN) for Bitcoin (BTC).  I already knew something about it making the transactions faster and cheaper compared to on-chain transactions.  I also knew that those transactions somehow were being done without involving the blockchain every time, and they would be reconciled later.  That was about it.

Talking more about it piqued my interest.  I started to understand that a person could build their own computer from a Raspberry Pi that could then run a node on LN.  That node would be funded with some BTC.  To me, I thought of it as a way to make the BTC work for me, to gain some interest or rewards.  Until now, I've basically kept it in a cold wallet.

My experience to that point was:  owning miners (BTC, Kadena (KDA), and Litecoin/Dogecoin (LTC/DOGE)), owning crypto, and doing a lot of proof-of-stake (POS) validating for Ethereum (ETH), Gnosis (GNO), and Quantum (QTUM).

Owning and operating a BTC LN node sounded a bit like the POS validating that I had been doing; I would put up or stake some BTC, and it would be used to help the LN.  Another similarity was that the computer that would run the actual node did not have to be anything fancy or powerful.  It didn't have to be a super-powerful and specialized ASIC miner with high electricity demands that is used for proof-of-work (POW) BTC mining.

I had hoped that one of the two staking computers that I already had up and running (an AVADO and a DAppNode) had an app for running a LN node.  But, it doesn't seem that either OS has an app for that.  I decided to search for videos/FAQs about setting up a LN node.