Receive nostr zaps with your lightning node with Ligess (self-hosted, personal lightning address)

donderdag 23 maart 2023 - 451 woorden, 3 min read

From the first moment lightning zaps were introduced in Nostr (NIP-57) I was looking for a way how to receive these sats from zaps to my own lightning node. I discovered Ligess and stucked to that when I noticed Mutatrum was already building a solution for receiving zaps.

At this moment, most zaps over Nostr are received by custodial wallets with lightning addresses like Wallet of Satoshi and Alby (source).

From a more self-sovereign point of view you would like to have the option to use a self-custodial wallet with a lightning address which accept zaps.

Lightning zaps with Ligess

Mutatrum did some nice work with integrating lightning zaps into Ligess, a self-hosted personal lightning address application. Ligess runs as a nodejs application. In my opinion this tool acts like a lightning extension / micro application.

The Ligess repository: https://github.com/dolu89/ligess
The merged pull request with the changes by Muratum for integrating NIP-57 Lightning Zaps
NIP-57: https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nips/blob/master/57.md

My setup with Ligess

I’ve used the documentation on https://theroadtonode.com for installing, configuring and maintaining the software for running my own lightning node. This setup is running for more than two years.

I’ve written a documentation article as a contribution for The Road to Node how you can install Ligess: https://trtn.sebastix.dev/lightning-extensions/ligess.

In summary, these are the pieces running on my node device:

Nginx reverse proxy configuration for my domain lnd.sebastix.com

upstream ligess {
        server 127.0.0.1:4080;
    }

server {
    server_name lnd.sebastix.com;

    listen [::]:443 ssl http2;
    listen 443 ssl http2;
    ssl_certificate /etc/letsencrypt/live/lnd.sebastix.com/fullchain.pem; # managed by Certbot
    ssl_certificate_key /etc/letsencrypt/live/lnd.sebastix.com/privkey.pem; # managed by Certbot
    include /etc/letsencrypt/options-ssl-nginx.conf;
    ssl_dhparam /etc/letsencrypt/ssl-dhparams.pem;
    ssl_session_cache shared:ligess:1m;

    proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Proto $scheme;
    proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Host $host;

    location /.well-known/lnurlp/ {
        if ($request_method = 'GET') {
            add_header 'Access-Control-Allow-Origin' '*';
        }
        proxy_pass http://ligess;
    }
    location /ln {
        proxy_pass http://ligess;           
    }
}
server {
    if ($host = lnd.sebastix.com) {
        return 301 https://$host$request_uri;
    } 
    server_name lnd.sebastix.com;     
    listen 80;
    listen [::]:80;
    return 404;
}

Add Nostr private key as environment variable in the Ligess `.env` file

LIGESS_NOSTR_ZAPPER_PRIVATE_KEY=<a_hex_encoded_private_key>

Pro tip from Mutatrum: you can use a seperate key-pair here just for signing the zap notes.
Use Rana or noscl if you would like to generate a key-pair on your machine.

Systemd configuration for running Ligess as a system service

[Unit]
Description=Ligess
Requires=lnd.service
After=lnd.service
[Service]
User=lnd
WorkingDirectory=/home/lnd/ligess
ExecStart=yarn dev
Restart=always
TimeoutSec=120
RestartSec=30
[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

With this setup you can send me zaps over Nostr. The sats of those zaps will be send to my self-hosted lightning wallet connected to my lightning node.

My lightning address: sebastian@lnd.sebastix.com
The lnurl pay endpoint provided by Ligess: https://lnd.sebastix.com/.well-known/lnurlp/sebastian

Temporary solution

The NIP-57 is probably temporary and will be replaced or appended with other solutions in the future. You can read a nice discussion why here.

Please remember Nostr is in a very, very early phase of development and adoption.

I expect things will change a lot when BOLT12 is finished (source). The topic around lightning powered micropayments over Nostr will evolve fast.

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