2017-01-09 Lit sortof works on testnet. There are known bugs / omissions / errors, and also unknown ones! Reporting bugs / crashes is helpful, and fixing them is even more helpful.
2018-06-12 Updated to use new addresses and command formats. Lit also works much better than it did in the above note.
This walkthrough is to set people up who want to send payments over channels on a test network. If you haven't already, make sure to go to the README for setup instructions.
Make sure you have built both the lit and lit-af (in cmd/lit-af) packages with go build
If you have a full node, like bitcoind or btcd, start running that as well, either on testnet3 or regtest mode.
For this walkthrough, you will run 2 lit nodes and have them make channels. It's more fun for the nodes to be on different computers controlled by different people, but you can run them on the same machine for testing. You can also have the full node running on that machine as well.
In this example, there are 2 computers. Most things should work the same with 1 computer; just make sure to have 2 different folders for the lit nodes.
Set up two folders (i.e. anode and bnode) and copy both the lit and lit-af executables you built into both folders.
Here is a sample for Linux users who have not already built the packages
alice@pi2:~$ mkdir anode
alice@pi2:~$ cd gofolder/src/github.com/mit-dci/lit
alice@pi2:~/gofolder/src/github.com/mit-dci/lit$ go build
alice@pi2:~/gofolder/src/github.com/mit-dci/lit$ cp lit ~/anode/
alice@pi2:~/gofolder/src/github.com/mit-dci/lit$ cd cmd/lit-af
alice@pi2:~/gofolder/src/github.com/mit-dci/lit/cmd/lit-af$ go build
alice@pi2:~/gofolder/src/github.com/mit-dci/lit/cmd/lit-af$ cp lit-af ~/anode/
alice@pi2:~/gofolder/src/github.com/mit-dci/lit/cmd/lit-af$ cd ~/anode/
alice@pi2:~/anode$
Alice starts running lit (with ./lit --tn3 fullnode.net) and syncs up to the blockchain. The lit node will print lots of stuff on the screen, but can't be controlled from here.
Alice connects to her full node, fullnode.net. By default this is on testnet3, using port 18333.
alice@pi2:~/anode$ ./lit --tn3 fullnode.net -v
lit node v0.1
-h for list of options.
No file testkey.hex, generating.
passphrase:
repeat passphrase:
WARNING!! Key file not encrypted!!
Here Alice can type a passphrase to secure the wallet the newborn lit node is generating. But she just pressed enter twice, because this is testnet. Even though it's testnet, lit will show warnings about not using a passphrase.
Now in another window, alice connects to the lit node over RPC using ./lit-af
alice@pi2:~/anode$ ./lit-af
lit-af# ls
entered command: ls
Addresses:
0 tb1q39stxtf6udwnjpatadylkgakf8q9und06we8ew (mt3LiAN4EjaHQGeHWLoTHgDUtafALwL6Zv)
Utxo: 0 Conf:0 Channel: 0
Sync Height 1060000
ls shows how much money Alice has, which is none. She can get some from a faucet. One such faucet you can find here.
Bob can start a wallet in the same way; if Bob's node is running on the same computer, he'll have to run lit with -rpcport to listen on a different port, and start lit-af with -p to connect to that port. Once Alice and Bob are both set up, they can connect to each other.
Alice sets her node to listen:
lit-af# lis
entered command: lis
listening on ln1pmclh89haeswrw0unf8awuyqeu4t2uell58nea@:2448
n1ozwFWDbZXKYjqwySv3VaTxNZvdVmQcam is Alice's node-ID (This format will change soon). She's listening on port 2448, but any port can be specified with the lis command.
Bob can connect to Alice using her node-ID:
lit-af# con ln1pmclh89haeswrw0unf8awuyqeu4t2uell58nea@:2448@pi2
entered command: con ln1pmclh89haeswrw0unf8awuyqeu4t2uell58nea@:2448@pi2
connected to peer 1
lit-af# say 1 Hi Alice!
entered command: say 1 Hi Alice!
Bob puts the pubkey@hostname for Alice and connects. Then he says hi to Alice.
Before Bob can make a channel, he needs to sweep his coins to make sure they are in his segwit address.
lit-af# sweep tb1qrh7xpsmlgrd7lf4vv6yyn87j4n7pdjkra9jrr9 50000000
entered command: sweep tb1qrh7xpsmlgrd7lf4vv6yyn87j4n7pdjkra9jrr9 50000000
Swept
0 d297da04c43919e683ffc03539ee38e185425e8fa14d1ccae6577fbb35be575a
Bob is connected to Alice and wants to open a payment channel. If he has enough (segwit) money and is connected to Alice, he can open a channel.
lit-af# fund 1 1 50000000 0
This opens a channel with peer 1 (Alice) with a channel capacity of 50,000,000 satoshis (half a coin), and sends 0 satoshis over in the creation process. Bob starts out with all 50,000,000 satoshis in the channel, so only he can send to Alice. The second "1" is to specify the cointype, which is 1 for Bitcoin Testnet3.
(Do they count as micro-payments if testnet coins have zero value?)
use ls again to see that the channel is there, it will be labeled channel 1.
lit-af# push 1 200000
This pushes 200,000 satoshis to the other side of the channel. You can do this 200 trillion times before the channel needs to be closed. (Actually, since I don't think you can send that many payments, the software will probably crash if you do manage to exceed 2^48)
You can close the channel cooperatively using:
lit-af# close 1
or non-cooperatively with:
lit-af# break 1
to close the channel at the current state. Uncooperative is maybe more fun because the node who breaks the channel has to wait 5 blocks before they can use their money. The other node can spend immediately. After a cooperative close, they can both spend immediately. The break command does not need a connection to the other node.