A few weeks back Core Lightning had some type of error and would not run. I saw many, including you @paul , mention/respond to this in the Start9 forums.
Question: What external dependencies does Core Lightning have that would effect a sovereign node like that?
That is an excellent question. In that case, the issue was specifically with the UI (“CLN Application”) and not with the node itself. So you could still receive payments (and send too, as long as you used a different UI connected to your node, such as Zeus) They had made an assumption that the API they were using for converting between fiat and BTC would never be offline.
Devs tend to try and plan for failures, so I suspect these types of scenarios are rare, but there could well me more of them lurking in the code that nobody has noticed yet. Since we don’t know what we don’t know, I can address your question from a slightly different perspective – what steps can you take to remain sovereign and maintain access to your node, which cover a wide variety of possible failure modes. Here are some ideas for that:
Run your own instance of Bitcoin Knots as a full node.
Periodically collect a list of random peers that you can manually connect to if various infrastructures go down (a mixture of both Tor and clearnet peers). Some of the infrastructure required for a freshly-installed Lightning node to connect to the network includes:
– Node indexes (1ML, etc)
– DNS servers
– Hard-coded seed peers
Treat CLN Application UI, RTL, Spark, etc. as pure convenience layers. Learn and practice how to perform all critical tasks via lightning-cli, in case the UI fails:
– node info
– add funds to base layer wallet
– peer/channel management
– invoice generation
– sending payments
Take note of any swap/liquidity services you use (e.g., Boltz). Learn how and practice connecting to them over both clearnet and over Tor. Expect liquidity automations to break (such as CLBOSS) if these services go down.
Consider multiple independent watchtowers, or coordinate with familty or friends in another geolocation to connect as each-others’ watchtowers.