For those who don’t want to go through the hassle (which is particularly painful if you are like me and have a very large node with hundreds of channels), I just published Forktower to address the risks. I’ll be publishing a video today to go over it, but at a high level, it is a cross-chain watchtower which prevents your channel partners from cheating you on the opposite side of the chain split without you knowing.
If you go with Forktower, I recommend installing it now, since it has to sync a pruned node to be able to gain full visibility of the status quo chain and to publish your dispute transactions on your behalf if it detects that you are being cheated. It does an assumevalid to speed the IBD up, but it will still take a few hours. In the mean time, I’ll be doing some more thorough testing and will publish buffixes as soon as I find any issues.
Is there any other config to do on LND other than enabling Watchtower server?
Should I install on Node 2 to look at Node 1 like Watchtower?
It installs on the same server that the node you want to guard is running on (it comes with its own pruned node).
btw - @Fletcher Nice to hear/see you again. I wondered what happened to you. Glad to see your still among us. 
Default setting in config is set then eh?
Yes, which server are you running (StartOS 0.3.5.1, 0.4.0, or Umbrel)? I can double-check if anything needs to be tweaked in the settings.
Running StartOS 0.3.5.1
Yes, default config looks good. I’ll double-check the others as well.
BTW, this is somewhat rushed compared to where I would normally do an initial release, so expect there to be several updates over the next couple of days. If you run into issues let me know. The UI isn’t as user-friendly as some of my other recent apps.
I’ll keep an eye on things and reports anything I see. Thanks
Actually it is enabling Watchtower client (not server). It is a bit quirky though if you don’t already have a watchtower configured. Basically, you run Forktower and wait a bit for it to report its node ID and port, then update LND to enable Watchtower client, and add that ID/port as a new watchtower.
8/6/2026, 10:04:56 AM — Forktower raised an alert: your channels are protected by a watchtower that Forktower does not run. That works, and registering with more than one is sensible — but if one stops there is nothing here to restart, and no settings here to correct. The answer would be to register with another.
Not a problem right?
Yes, no problem. This is a wording issue though (I’ll update it). As written, it seems to imply that since you have a watchtower already, then you are good to go. That glosses over what adding Forktower as a watchtower does for you (patricularly that it is designed for the chain-split scenario if one occurs).
All done, just letting the download take place 
All kinds of things being reported under “What has happened”. I let things run for awhile and report back.
One thing…would you suggest the “Faster first sync” since there is only about 2 days before the event?
The download is done, the 2nd node is “checking the earlier history in the background, and watching the other chain while it does.”
