Bitcoin Sovereignty: Running Your Own Full Node - The Sovereign Computing Show (SOV014)

Tuesday, May 13, 2025

Bitcoin is built on the principle of not trusting third parties, but are you trusting someone else's node to validate your transactions? In this episode, Jordan Bravo and Stephen DeLorme explore why running your own Bitcoin and Lightning nodes is crucial for true financial sovereignty. They break down the hardware requirements, software options like Umbrel and Start OS, and how to connect popular wallets to your own node. Plus, news about Thunderbird's new email service and the concerning bankruptcy sale of 23andMe's genetic data.

Chapters

00:00 Why You Should Run Your Own Bitcoin Node
00:39 Introduction to The Sovereign Computing Show
00:55 ATL BitLab Sponsorship Information
01:58 Welcome and Contact Information
02:46 News: Thunderbird's New Email Service
06:29 News: 23andMe's Data Bankruptcy Sale
10:15 Main Topic: Bitcoin & Lightning Node Setup
13:28 The Philosophy of Verifying Your Own Transactions
18:00 Bitcoin Node Hardware Requirements
19:07 Bitcoin vs. Lightning Nodes Explained
21:59 Setting Up a Bitcoin Node with Umbrel or Start OS
24:42 Hardware Recommendations: From Raspberry Pi to Mini PCs
26:26 System Requirements and Performance Considerations
34:20 Connecting Wallets to Your Node (Phoenix, Blue Wallet, Sparrow)
38:01 Lightning Node Options: LND, Core Lightning, Alby Hub
40:01 Software Ecosystem Around Lightning Nodes
42:24 PhoenixD for Developers
46:22 User Feedback on Mobile Operating Systems
50:24 Conclusion

Transcript

Jordan Bravo: [00:00:00] Why would we wanna go through the effort of hosting our own Bitcoin node? Well, it comes down to trust or lack thereof. If you are interacting with the Bitcoin network, you are either using your own Bitcoin node or you're using somebody else's Bitcoin node. And when you are using somebody else's Bitcoin node, there is an inherent necessity for trust there. You are trusting that they are one, giving you the correct data about the Bitcoin network and two, that they are not spying on your transactions.

Welcome to the Sovereign Computing Show, presented by ATL BitLab. I'm Jordan Bravo, and this is a podcast where we teach you how to take back control of your devices. Sovereign Computing means you own your technology, not the other way around.

Stephen DeLorme: This episode is sponsored by [00:01:00] ATL BitLab. ATL BitLab is Atlanta's freedom tech hacker space. We have co working desks, conference rooms, event space, maker tools, and tons of coffee. There is a very active community here in the lab. Every Wednesday night is Bitcoin night here in Atlanta. We also have meetups for cyber security, artificial intelligence, decentralized identity, product design, and more.

We offer day passes and nomad passes for people who need to use the lab only occasionally, as well as memberships for people who plan to use the lab more regularly, such as myself. One of the best things about having a BitLab membership isn't the amenities, it's the people. Surrounding yourself with a community helps you learn faster and helps you build better.

Your creativity becomes amplified when you work in this space, that's what I think at least. If you're interested in becoming a member or supporting this space, please visit us at atlbitlab. com. That's A-T-L-B-I-T-L-A-B-dot com. Alright, on to our show.

Jordan Bravo: [00:02:00] Welcome to The Sovereign Computing Show. I'm Jordan Bravo, and I am recording here today from ATL BitLab in the heart of Atlanta with Stephen DeLorme.

Stephen DeLorme: Sup.

Jordan Bravo: We wanna remind you that you can write into the show by boosting with Fountain FM as the podcast client, and you can attach some SATs to that. We will read your feedback and suggestions on the show. You can also send us an email. That email address is sovereign@atlbitlab.com. That's S-O-V-E-R-E-I-G-N@atlbitlab.com. And to see all of the information regarding this episode, go to atlbitlab.com/podcast.

Today, before we get into our main topic, we wanna bring to you a couple of interesting news items that are relevant to the sovereign computing space.

The first one we want to talk about today [00:03:00] is about Thunderbird. And Thunderbird, to remind you is a email and calendar client by Mozilla and it's only a client that you download and use on your computer, or on your Android phone, but it has not been a service in the way of like Gmail or Outlook or something like that.

But they have just announced that they are now gonna be offering a service and it's kind of a multi-pronged service that they are offering a competing service to the likes of Gmail and those other companies and, they're calling it, they're calling one of them Thundermail. So if you, for example, don't have an email address and you want to use Thunderbird, previously you had to bring your own email address and email service. So whether you're bringing in from Gmail or some other more privacy respecting email provider, you had to bring your own email provider, and Thunderbird was just the client. [00:04:00] But now going forward, Thunder mail.com is a service that they're providing, and you'll be able to have your own domain name.

I, I believe it's Thunder. You'll have your, your name@thundermail.com or tb.pro. They're providing both a free service and a premium service. And the premium service, you get to one, know that you're supporting, um, an open source and privacy respecting service, but you also get some value add such as, you know what, I'm not seeing it here.

Stephen, do you see any of the, the professional.

Stephen DeLorme: Uh, let's see. Pro? No, I do not.

Jordan Bravo: It might be more of a, a future feature that they're promising to release, but uh, maybe in the meantime it's just gonna be that the free basic [00:05:00] service.

Stephen DeLorme: Yeah. Huh. Interesting. Pro. Yeah. I don't really talk about it a whole lot.

Jordan Bravo: But, uh, in any case, the free service is gonna be having your own email address and server. They also offer something called Thunderbird appointment. It's a scheduling tool that allows you to send a link to someone, allowing them to pick a time on your calendar to meet. So this is kind of like Calendly, if any of you have ever used that or interacted with somebody who's used Calendly, basically, I can send a link to somebody, they click it, it takes them to a webpage, and then they can schedule themselves on my calendar.

The other thing that they're offering is something called Thunderbird Send, and this is a rebirth of Firefox Send, which was a service that Mozilla previously offered, where if I wanna share a file with somebody on my computer. It's kind of like [00:06:00] Dropbox upload or one of these other services where you could just send a link to somebody and they can click it, open their browser and download it. It makes it incredibly easy to send things very convenient. So the reason I wanted to share these with you is because this is a more private privacy respecting and open source version of some of these proprietary services that already exists and have existed for years with other providers.

Stephen DeLorme: I think these are the pro services. It's like what are the services?

Jordan Bravo: Okay, so we'll have to do some more research onto into which, which of these are provided for on the free account and which are provided on the pro account. As soon as these are publicly available, it might be the case that they're already available, but I'm gonna do a little more research and try these myself. And then, uh, I'll report back here and, and we'll go over them in more detail, but I just wanted to [00:07:00] bring this to everyone's attention and boost in or write in and let us know if you are interested in these services, if you've already tried them. Uh, if so, what you think.

Stephen DeLorme: That's pretty cool. Is Thunderbird still maintained by Mozilla? Well, it must be. I just saw the Mozilla logo on some of this.

Jordan Bravo: Yes, it is.

Stephen DeLorme: Well, you know, maybe that's a, a revenue model that's not Google. That's cool.

Jordan Bravo: Yep. Mozilla has tried a lot. They've thrown a lot of things at the wall and not much has stuck except for their Google funding over the years. So it'll be nice to see this. Maybe it'll actually generate some revenue for them and they'll be less dependent on Google.

Stephen DeLorme: Yeah, and that's cool. The request for appointment thing is, uh, pretty cool. I don't know. I mean, it feels like, Calendly has just been the incumbent player in the appointment scheduling space and all that, so it would be fun to see some more [00:08:00] privacy-focused brands, uh, looking into that product feature.

Jordan Bravo: Yeah, I'd like to give it a try. I already used Thunderbird as a client on my devices, so this might be a cool addition.

All right. The next item we want to talk about, which is timely, and this is 23andMe, the company that does A DNA test for people. This article is from fortune.com and it says 23andMe says "It won permission from a judge to sell customers medical and ancestry data. Here's how to delete yours." And then, um, the details are that a US bankruptcy judge ruled, DNA testing company 23andMe, which filed for bankruptcy Sunday has the right to sell customers medical and ancestry data to potential bidders. Offers will be due on May 7th. A final hearing will be held in June. And this is [00:09:00] 2025 in case anybody is listening to this in the future. But we'll put the link to this article in the show notes, but I want to give my quick, uh, opinion on this, and I've been saying for years that you don't wanna give your DNA to these companies just for the kind of novelty of knowing that you came from continent X, Y, and Z. To me, it just never sat right to have something so personal that could be used against me by nefarious organizations as my DNA and my whole genome and putting this in some cloud providers database, one to be hacked or two in this kind of exact scenario where the company is going out of business through bankruptcy, and now basically they're selling off all the company assets, including their massive customer database.

So I hope that none of you [00:10:00] have your data with 23andMe, but if you do, check out this article and act now before the deadline, before they're able to sell it off. And maybe you can get yours deleted from the database before they sell it.

Stephen DeLorme: Uh, it might be worth asking. We actually had a conversation about this at the cybersecurity meetup at ATL BitLab a few weeks ago. Somebody asked the question, "Well, what's the big deal? Like, why does it matter if some other company gets my genetic material? What are we worried about?"

Jordan Bravo: Sure. I, I think one that comes immediately to mind is that what if your health insurance company buys this data and now they can exclude you from coverage because you have genetic disease X, Y, Z. Or maybe your potential children will have genetic disease, X, Y, Z because you're a carrier for this particular gene. And so now maybe they'll develop a policy where [00:11:00] they're gonna exclude anybody with gene X, Y, Z because it leads to some disease. And so they would consider that a preexisting condition, and therefore they're gonna deny you coverage. So that's just one example of, of how it could be used against you.

Stephen DeLorme: You can also imagine some future science fiction scenarios where, uh, you know, maybe if you find that, uh, I don't know, you have a gene that makes you more like susceptible or something like, I've heard that like there are some genes that play like greater roles and like addiction and stuff like that, and I'm, I'm sure there's genes that play roles in other, like personality types and all that. So, uh, you know, you can imagine some minority report, uh, situation where all advertising is targeted based on people's genetic profiles.

Jordan Bravo: Minority report, or another one that comes to mind is Gatica, where we you get discriminated against because of your genome. You know, you're, you're only qualified for this position if you have these particular genes, or, or you've got these particular genes, so you're [00:12:00] disqualified from this position.

Stephen DeLorme: Oh, I'm not familiar with that one. I've heard the name, but never watched it.

Jordan Bravo: That's a good one. You should check it out. It, it's very like kind of corny nineties, but it's, it's got a really cool concept where in the future, everybody's genome is, is mapped and it's tied to your identity. And if you've, you basically, you have like a society that's very cast driven because of your genome.

Stephen DeLorme: Oh. I'm sure there are people out here worried about, like that Black Mirror episode where the, they're like taking people's genes and spinning up replicas of their brains inside of video games and stuff. But, uh, that was my least favorite Black Mirror episode. I don't think, uh, that's, that's anything we actually have to worry about right this second. Having our entire brains being copyable by, uh. DNA, that's, that's not hard science fiction. That's soft science fiction. But the health, the health insurance thing, I, I would agree is probably the most immediate threat or concern [00:13:00] one would have about this kind of thing.

Jordan Bravo: Sure. And while this one particular thing might not be a complete end of the world scenario, it's all about reducing your digital footprint and becoming a smaller target and, and having less of your data strewn across the internet.

Stephen DeLorme: Yeah.

Jordan Bravo: Get those wins where you can, and improve your digital footprint where you can.

All right, so we're gonna move on to today's main topic, which is how to host your own Bitcoin and Lightning node. Before we talk about the how, let's talk about why. Why would we wanna go through the effort of hosting our own Bitcoin node? Well, it comes down to trust or lack thereof. If you are interacting with the Bitcoin network, you are either using your own Bitcoin [00:14:00] node or you're using somebody else's Bitcoin node. And when you are using somebody else's Bitcoin node, there is an inherent necessity for trust there. You are trusting that they are one, giving you the correct data about the Bitcoin network and two, that they are not spying on your transactions.

For example, if I've got a client and I'm gonna talk about like, let's say Blue Wallet, which is a iOS and Android Bitcoin wallet software. Out of the box, it's gonna be connecting to a third party node. Now, they have a system that minimizes trust by having a series of different nodes that it could connect to. And these are trustworthy nodes and it's semi anonymized, but at the end of the day, you are trusting those nodes. And so if I make a transaction, I am trusting that it was [00:15:00] not intercepted, and my IP address is not being correlated with those transactions and sort of doxing my account. Any additional thoughts on that particular point, Stephen?

Stephen DeLorme: Yeah, I think there's also a philosophical kind of angle to hosting your own Bitcoin node. You hear a lot of times this mantra in Bitcoin and the wider crypto ecosystem of be your own Bank. And so what does that mean? I think it goes a little deeper than just I can send and receive without a middleman.

There's also being able to verify that the money that you're receiving is actually valid and recognized and real money. So, uh, if you think about Bitcoin, well, what is it? Well, it's, it's basically just this ledger, and it's this idea that every Bitcoin user, which really in this context is really just anybody, any Bitcoin node kind [00:16:00] of agrees on the state of the ledger. And that ledger is updated roughly every 10 minutes. Uh, and the nodes have to come to agree on what that is. Well, if you don't have, you know, your own node, you're trusting somebody else's node. so it's kind of this strange idea where you think about it, of like, you know, let's say somebody sends you one Bitcoin because you're, I don't know, selling a car or something. These days that's a really expensive car. But anyways, somebody's sending you a Bitcoin and the little, you know, wallet interface lights up and says you've received a Bitcoin. And it's like, well, how do you know that's really a Bitcoin? And how do you know that's not just like some web interface or some, you know, front end UI that's telling you that you know your account has been incremented. You don't actually know unless you're going through a Bitcoin node and you're, you know, validating from the source, from an actual, you know, proper [00:17:00] copy of the ledger that is the blockchain. You don't really know otherwise, if the money's real or not, or if the transaction's real. So I don't want to scare everybody and well, maybe I do.

I don't, you know, want to say that, you know. all websites that, tell you anything to do with the Bitcoin blockchain are bad or wrong or anything like that. But at, at a certain level, you don't really know for sure unless you've actually run the Bitcoin node yourself. So, you know, if you're just starting off your Bitcoin journey, it's one of those things where, you know, a little bit on exchange might be fine. Maybe you want to withdraw some of that to a hot wallet on, uh, your phone or something like that. But if you're getting to the point, you know, where you've got a bunch of, you know, Bitcoin and cold storage or something like that, when you start having, you know, more and more, uh, in Bitcoin, it's, it might be worth, it depends on, depending on your threat model, but it might be worth it to actually validate that money is real and actually [00:18:00] there.

Jordan Bravo: Agreed. And a Bitcoin node is, don't be thrown off by the terminology. it's not some kind of magical computer. It can be any computer. You could be running Bitcoin node software on a desktop or a laptop. But typically you want to have it running continuously all the time, so you're gonna be running it on something that you leave plugged in and on 24/7.

And if you think about it, Bitcoin blocks are generated every 10 minutes. So really it needs to be continuously connected to the internet and on so that it can be updated the Bitcoin blockchain with the latest block. And then when you are accessing it from a remote client, like a mobile phone or laptop, let's say, that it's got the latest, Bitcoin blockchain information.

So typically you want to be running it on the same kind of hardware as you'd run a typical home server. This could be is something as low powered as a Raspberry Pi, or it could be a little bit more powerful, maybe little home PC that you leave [00:19:00] plugged in. But in any case, you're gonna get the best results if you can leave it on 24/7.

We'll talk a little bit more about the how, but we've been talking about the Base Layer or Layer one blockchain node. We also wanna talk about today how we're gonna, you can host a lightning node and let's get into the difference between the Bitcoin and lightning node, and also the why of why you might wanna also additionally, set up a lightning node in addition to your Bitcoin node.

Now, first, a lightning node. It requires a Bitcoin node, so a lightning node is simply additional software that's running on top of or side by side with a Bitcoin node and a lightning node basically speaks the lightning protocol so that any two Bitcoin nodes that speak the lightning protocol can communicate with each other and send payments back and forth in [00:20:00] what's called a payment channel.

And when you host your own lightning node with your Bitcoin node, you gain some major benefits because while hosting, while you can certainly run a Bitcoin node on something like a mobile device, and there's a lot of cool apps out there that'll do this. For example, Phoenix or Zeus, you are making certain trade-offs in terms of, what is being trusted by that app and that server. So, uh, we'll get into the nitty gritty of, of about how you would do that and the different trade offs there. But similar to with a Bitcoin node, you're really bringing that entire stack into your own control, and you're giving yourself the ability to know and not have to trust that you are running, that you've, the amount of money that you see that you have is actually the amount of money that you do have and that, nobody else is able to [00:21:00] view or spy on your transactions. Stephen, any additional thoughts on running a lightning node and, and the why of it?

Stephen DeLorme: Yeah, I mean, and I'll just, I'll rephrase the why slightly. I mean, lightning is nice because people can make transactions that are much quicker and much cheaper in transaction fees. You know, it's like a lot of times, you know, if you're just running a Bitcoin node, maybe you're only interested in on-chain stuff. You know, maybe you're dealing with transactions that are bigger transactions, let's say, um, and maybe with the lightning node, you're trying to engage in. It doesn't have to be smaller transactions, but it very well could be smaller, more frequent transactions, maybe engaging in value for value stuff. Again, it's not my place to tell you how to use your Bitcoin and lightning node, but just throwing out some examples there of of like on-chain Bitcoin use versus the lightning use case.

Jordan Bravo: [00:22:00] Cool. So if we wanna host our own Bitcoin node. How do we start going about that? It's gonna depend on your technical skill level, but if you are somebody who doesn't want to bother with the terminal and you are completely inexperienced when it comes to Linux, you'll probably want to go with a graphical operating system like Umbrel and Start OS are the two that we've mentioned before and we're going to show those on the screen here. For those of you just listening, we are at umbrel.com and if you go into the Umbrel app store, we can, you can see Bitcoin node and it's a one click install. And when you install this, it's going to start the initial block download, which is where it's gonna sync the Bitcoin blockchain data, all from all the way back to the beginning, the Genesis block in [00:23:00] 2009, up to the present. And depending on the power of your hardware and the speed of your internet connection, this could take anywhere from a few hours to a few days.

Stephen DeLorme: And then, uh, yeah, I haven't used the latest versions of Umbrel, but I remember using Umbrel like four years ago. It was pretty easy to set up.

Jordan Bravo: The other graphical option is Start OS by Start9. And similarly to Umbrel, they have a marketplace and you can search for Bitcoin Core. You'll notice that sometimes it's gonna be called Bitcoin Core. Sometimes it's just referred to as a Bitcoin node, but this is the same exact software.

Stephen DeLorme: Yeah. And for anyone who doesn't know Bitcoin core is like the main Bitcoin implementation that like the vast majority of Bitcoin nodes are running Bitcoin Core. Because it's kind of the default. Yeah. It's frequently abbreviated.

Jordan Bravo: The other app that I highly recommend [00:24:00] installing is called it's an Electrum server, um, but it, you may see it listed as Electrs. That's E-L-E-C-T-R-S. And this runs alongside your Bitcoin core Software. And it's, it's an indexer. What that means is it, Bitcoin Core by default doesn't have the full functionality that a lot of apps like to take advantage of. And so by downloading and installing Electrs after your Bitcoin node is fully synced, you're going to get the full functionality in terms of being able to connect a lot of common apps to it.

Stephen DeLorme: Yeah, and that should also be on the App store too. So it looks like Start9 has Electrs and then I think we saw earlier that they have ElectrumX, Electrs and Fulcrum on Umbrel, but I mean, they, they're all basically Electrum servers.

Jordan Bravo: Yeah, they're all, they're all similar. Although [00:25:00] in my experience, Electrs and Fulcrum have better performance than Electrum X, so I'd recommend one of those two.

Stephen DeLorme: Cool.

Jordan Bravo: If you're wondering about which of those two, I would say depends on your hardware. If you have beefier hardware, go with Fulcrum and you're gonna get better performance. But if your hardware is a little bit more constrained, then Electrs will perform a little bit better.

Stephen DeLorme: Ah, okay.

Jordan Bravo: Those are the two graphical options. But if you are a Linux proficient individual, or maybe you wanna try running it on your own server, VPS or home server. You can run it through a Docker image, or you can simply go to one of the sites, one of the GitHub repos and follow the instructions there. It's relatively straightforward. You're gonna have to give it the username and password of your Bitcoin [00:26:00] Core node, and then you're off to the races. Similarly to how Bitcoin Core has to download the initial, do the initial block download and build up that database of the Bitcoin blockchain. The Electrum server is going to have to scan the whole Bitcoin blockchain that you've downloaded, and it's gonna build up an index that can take a few hours, but it's a lot quicker than the Bitcoin block download.

So, however long your Bitcoin blockchain download took, it'll take a fraction of that time, but it will take some time.

Stephen DeLorme: Now, it might be worth talking a little bit about ways to improve this, and like system requirements. Let me know if I'm getting ahead of, of you here on this, but I think right now the Bitcoin blockchain is about a terabyte, or I'm sorry, it's less than a terabyte in size. I think it's like six or 700 gigabytes. And about four years ago, the kind of recommendation [00:27:00] was that if you want to run a Bitcoin node on, say, like an Umbrel, you are supposed to plug in a one terabyte hard drive, like minimum. I wonder if that's still the case or if the requirements have gotten more.

Jordan Bravo: I currently run a home server with a 1 TB drive SSD, and I've got the six to 700 gigabyte Bitcoin blockchain data as well as these Electrum servers, uh, 100 to 200 gigabytes of index data, and it's running very smoothly for me. So I would say you can still run a completely unpruned, Bitcoin node with one terabyte drive.

Stephen DeLorme: So then that's good then. But yeah, it is something to keep in mind that like it is gonna keep getting bigger and bigger and as you. Because you, you bring a good point there is it's not just the blockchain, it's also like the index and all of that. So you [00:28:00] will eventually reach a point, I'm not saying it's critical right now, but you will reach a point where it will get to be too, uh, small, like, I don't know, maybe another four years, something like that, eight years. I don't know. But it might be the sort of thing to think about that if like you're just starting from scratch right now. Maybe, maybe two terabytes, but I don't know. I might be getting way ahead.

Jordan Bravo: Yeah. Two terabyte drive will give you years of space to grow. The other option, and maybe you were alluding to this, is you can enable the pruning feature,

Stephen DeLorme: Yeah. Pruning is great.

Jordan Bravo: for Bitcoin Core and pruning will, throw out some of the older block data. It'll, you can give it a parameter of however many megabytes or gigabytes you wanna constrain it to. And then anything above that, it will simply throw it away and not, it won't take up space on your drive.

Stephen DeLorme: Yeah. And you could do something like, you know, I, I only want to keep, uh, six gigabytes of Bitcoin data. That's great, because you're still validating from block zero. Like the, the [00:29:00] node is still going back to the Genesis block and it's checking every single block. But once it hits its max limit, it starts throwing away. It's like first in, first out. It, it starts throwing out the blocks that it doesn't need anymore once it's validated it. So you can save a lot of space that way. I think another thing maybe too, like system requirements, because like, I think when I was, you know, now I just usually do Bitcoin nodes on like VPSs personally, but, or back when I was using Umbrel, I had like a SSD hooked up with like USD, uh, USB 3.0.

And, uh, I've heard that apparently the SSD really actually speeds up performance a lot. I, I, which I was really surprised by. I would've thought that the bottleneck would've been the, you know, one gigabit per second network cable going from the computer to the router. And I would've thought, uh, that would've been the bottleneck, not necessarily the, you [00:30:00] know, that it wouldn't really matter if the SSD was capable of, you know, writing data at a full three gigabits per second because it's bottleneck something before that. But, I, I've at least heard reports that it's way, way faster downloading the blockchain to the SSD as opposed to a spinning disc.

Jordan Bravo: Oh, yeah. I, I can confirm I've done both and the processor speed affects it. The SSD versus like a spinning disc, hard disc affects it. And that's because it's not the downloading that's the bottleneck, but rather the validating it, which is a processor intensive task.

Stephen DeLorme: Mm.

Jordan Bravo: And then writing that to disc is also very, um, I/O intensive. So you have both an I/O bound for, this is sort of a software engineering speak, but like you have a bottleneck both on the I/O part of it and on the processing part of it.

Stephen DeLorme: Mm. Yeah. And I think Bitcoin Core is like, it waits until one block is validated, before it [00:31:00] downloads the next one. I think is how that works. So if you, even if you have a really fast internet connection, if it's validating them slowly, it's basically that's preventing it from asking for the next block and downloading it.

So yeah, I could see how the, the CPU validation would add a good bit of time to that. And then, yeah, if it's having to like write some data to the disc, then check it and then write it again or, or whatever it's doing, then, the hard drive time would take a lot there. So yeah, all things to consider.

Jordan Bravo: The, the upshot of that is that I have personally found that a Raspberry Pi, for example, a Pi 4 specifically, it could run a Bitcoin node at a reasonable enough performance. But when I added a lightning node on top of that, it became the UX became really bad. It was just too much data to process. And so I would say if you're only [00:32:00] interested in running a Bitcoin node, then a Raspberry Pi 4 or greater processing device will be sufficient. But if you are gonna put a lightning node on top of it as well, you're gonna want some slightly more powerful hardware. We're not talking about anything crazy here. Raspberry Pi 4s are very low powered. So something as simple as like an I3 processor for, you know, you might recognize that this is like what would come in a really cheap laptop.

Stephen DeLorme: Mm-hmm.

Jordan Bravo: But like, that's gonna be plenty sufficient for a, a Bitcoin and lightning node.

Stephen DeLorme: Yeah. We had a lightning node, a workshop, how to build one at AtL Bitlab a couple years ago, that Packet Protector taught and he, he set everybody up on the Start OS and he had these like computers. He was pointing everybody to online that you could order. They were pretty cool because they were like just these kind of business computers. They were, you know, originally Dell or I can't remember what brand, but they're originally meant to just like run windows, whatever version, and, and be kind of [00:33:00] a affordable business machine.

They're very small form factor, like, you know, half the size of a laptop, maybe smaller. They were, and they were super cheap and, you know, they had processing and RAM capabilities much greater than a Raspberry Pi, because they weren't built for like, you know, kids hacking on IOT devices. They were like built for like people to actually, you know, do business productivity stuff on.

So yeah, you don't need like a full on supercomputer just to get something beefier, uh, than a Raspberry Pi. It.

Jordan Bravo: Totally. And I highly recommend those. Go on, you can get them used on eBay. You know, businesses will buy these in bulk and then sell them, so you're getting it only slightly used. Like Stephen was saying, they come in these, they call them mini PCs, mini form factor PCs.

Sometimes they're called one liter PCs. But they're these little things about as big as a router and it's a full on PC, and HP, Lenovo and Dell all make ones that you [00:34:00] can get for a hundred, 150 bucks with really decent hardware. And this is, these will be plenty to run, not only your Bitcoin and lightning nodes, but all kinds of other self-hosted software. So if you're interested in running any kind of stuff at home, these make great devices.

Alright, so once you've gotten your home server or VPS, however you wanna run it. And you are running Bitcoin Core. Maybe you're also running your Electrum server and you're running your lightning node. Actually, let's set aside the lightning node for a second, but you've got your Bitcoin Core and Electrum server running, what do you do to take advantage of that now?

Now, what you can do is you go into your client software and three of them that come to mind might be Phoenix Wallet on mobile, Blue Wallet, also on mobile and Sparrow Wallet on desktop. And these three all take advantage of the Electrum [00:35:00] server protocol, so they can all talk to your Electrum server. And you're going to go into the settings of those wallets and there's a specific section where you can just copy paste the address of your Electrum server. Once you've done that, you'll notice that sometimes you might have to restart the app, but once you do, you now know that your wallet is only talking to your own nodes.

So all of the data that it's getting about the Bitcoin blockchain and about any transactions is talking to your own node so you can rest assured that nobody else has seen your transactions and you all those, those transactions are being fully validated.

Stephen DeLorme: Yeah. Spare is a really, really good one for, well, almost anything. I mean, a lot of people love it for multisig and cold storage, like interacting with their hardware wallet. And it's, it has a lot of advanced functionality. It's kind of almost like become the, the Swiss Army knife of making Bitcoin transactions. And that Blue Wallet I think is, uh, [00:36:00] super easy to use. I think it's a good choice for like a hot wallet or something like that. Your, your first hot wallet, Phoenix, I stand. Phoenix is definitely one of my favorite lightning wallets, so it's cool. You can point it at your own Electrum server.

Jordan Bravo: Yeah. Phoenix is my number one recommendation for people who just wanna get into lightning really quickly. It's got great UX and you don't have to host your own lightning node. This is one of those apps we mentioned where it's a node is actually running on the phone. But by hosting your, pointing it at your own Electrum server, you get sort of the, almost the best of both worlds, because the nodes running on your phone and you're, you're getting your own validated data. So you're getting like, I would say 90+ percent of the benefits of running your own lightning node, but without having to also manage your own liquidity.

Stephen DeLorme: Oh, this might be a good moment to point out real quick that Phoenix is back in the USA. They were pulled off the App Stores we mentioned in some [00:37:00] previous episode that the Phoenix had gotten, uh, or had had decided voluntarily to pull out of the US app store out of, you know, some, I guess, regulatory concerns. But I guess those concerns are, uh, no longer an issue. So they're back in the US so download it, give it a shot.

Jordan Bravo: Yeah, that's right. So it is currently April of 2025 as we're recording this and last year in roughly the same time in 2024, Phoenix, like Stephen said, they pulled out of the US app stores because of regulatory concerns. But they're back now. So if you have not tried out Phoenix, I encourage you to give it a shot. You can get it on Google Play or the Apple App Store, or if you have listened to our recent episodes about alternative app stores, you can also just go to Obtanium and you can add Phoenix's, GitHub repo, and you can just download it from there. Anything else you want to add regarding Bitcoin nodes, lightning [00:38:00] nodes, or, uh oh.

Before I forget, if you are running your own lightning node, in my opinion, the best remote control for it on your mobile device is gonna be ZEUS. So I wanted to make sure to give it, shout out to ZEUS. ZEUS has the ability to run its own lightning node in the phone, in the app, but I think, it also shines as the best remote control app where you can point it at your own lightning node and control it from your phone.

Stephen DeLorme: Yeah, absolutely. I guess we didn't really get into the lightning stuff too deep. Um, which we can if you want. We didn't really get into like the node options for that and all that.

Jordan Bravo: Let's do that. Let's talk about what the options are, if somebody is in the Umbrel store or the Start9 store. Yeah. And they're looking at the different lightning nodes, what are the options and what are the trade-offs?

Stephen DeLorme: Yeah. So let's see. Actually, it's been a while since I've looked at, uh, the Umbrel one. Ooh. So this is nice. It looks like when I was using Umbrel, it [00:39:00] looks like they did not have Core Lightning, but they now have uh, Core Lightning, and then they should have LND somewhere. Well, they have Lightning terminal. Oh, so they just call it Lightning Node, run your Personal Lightning Network node.

So I'm like 99% sure that's referring to LND, which is like the, the one that was, is like kind of maintained by Lightning Labs. Uh, then you've got Core Lightning on here as well, which is like Blockstream's version. And they also support, uh, Alby Hub. Alby Hub is kind of a custom built, lightning wallet. I think it was built with LDK, but that's all under the hood stuff that doesn't matter, but to most folks. But yeah, you can also run Alby Hub. That's a fully functional lightning node. And then I think the rest of the tools I'm seeing on this page are just more like tooling and stuff for interacting with your lightning node, but Core Lightning, LND and Lightning Node and Alby Hub are kind of the the primary [00:40:00] options on Umbrel.

Jordan Bravo: Yeah, and this is one of the advantages of hosting your own lightning node is you get to take advantage of all of this other great software that's out there that can run on top of a lightning node. So something that comes to mind is LNBits, which is a web UI for managing various lightning accounts, and there's all kinds of really cool additional plugins for it.

So you could, for example, add, uh, you can use Nostr Wallet Connect and you could be zapping people, fully self-custodial with your own lightning node. You could add, like Stephen said, Alby Hub, and then you can plug into your podcast software and be doing boostagrams with podcasting 2.0, all on your own lightning node. So there's a whole ecosystem of software that works in conjunction with lightning nodes.

Stephen DeLorme: And Start9 it looks like, has the same options. LND, Core Lightning and Alby Hub. I, I haven't really heard a big self-hosting story around the [00:41:00] Async. But I, I think the reason is because, uh, Async is, uh, a lightning node made by the same people who make Phoenix and a lot of time Async is like, well, there's a big, the biggest lightning node on the network is the Async node. And I don't think many people run the server version though, boost in, and let me know if I'm wrong about that. But most of the people who use Async software use their Phoenix wallet, their mobile.

Jordan Bravo: Yeah. And we should say that the Phoenix, that the node that you can run for Phoenix on the servers called PhoenixD.

Stephen DeLorme: Yeah.

Jordan Bravo: The D standing for demon, like, similar to Bitcoin D.

Stephen DeLorme: Yeah. Different than the Async server node itself. But yeah, that's cool. So, okay, so you got lightning options on all these different things and you know, like similarly with the Bitcoin node, you can, if you don't, if you're not using Start9, if you're not using Umbrel, you can still, uh, set this, you know, software up on your own.

I think Alby actually has some kind of hosting thing for Alby Hub that they can do for you.

Jordan Bravo: Yeah. Let's give a shout out to [00:42:00] them. Alby Hub. What is their getalby.com, I think is their website, but they have a hosted option and it's kind of cool because they offer a trust minimized solution where they're hosting the lightning node, but it's done in such a way that, you're not giving up too much in terms of, um, 'rugability' for them to steal your funds or anything like that.

Stephen DeLorme: Yeah. but yeah, so, but in addition to this, you know, you could host Alby Hub locally. I mean, you might be able to put it on a laptop, I'm not sure. You know, LND, Core Lightning, you know, you can run all that from a server. If you do need to run one from a server, I gotta say my favorite is PhoenixD right now. Uh, just in the, you don't have to deal with all the, like, lightning liquidity crap. Like they just open a channel directly to you. And like, you know, if you're familiar with the terminal, it's like one of the easiest installs ever. Like, you basically, like, they have like a two command installation on their website, wget the [00:43:00] download the binary, and then you unzip it and you run it. That's it. So like, as long as you, you know, unless you want to get into compiling source code, that's a whole other rabbit hole. But just in terms of, getting it to work, you just download it and run it. It's like stupid simple. I, I think if you want to run a lightning node on a server, I might recommend personally PhoenixD um, as a starting point for that. And then if you have more sophisticated needs and, you know, need more customizability and stuff, you can get into LND and, and you know, stuff like that.

Jordan Bravo: So if you're running PhoenixD on a server. And I've not done this, so I'm curious, can you then take for example, ZEUS and point it to PhoenixD and control it from there?

Stephen DeLorme: I actually don't know about that. I should check on that. Yeah, that's a good point. It might be that, it might be if you need that, easy mobile, you know, use case, maybe it's not the option for you. I guess I always default [00:44:00] into thinking about, uh. Lightning nodes server, lightning nodes as like backing web applications and stuff like that. And so I'm usually not worried about that. You can hook it up to LNBits very easily. Getting LNBits in PhoenixD talking to each other is very easy. But yeah, if your use case is actually okay, yeah, I think you're right. I don't think there's actually a lot of UI options. So I retract my statement or let me re-clarify my statement, if your use case is you're building web applications that need to talk to a lightning network and you know, need to be able to, you know, receive Bitcoin and stuff like that, then I think PhoenixD is probably the easiest thing for you. But if you're wanting to like run your own home bank or whatever, and then you might benefit from something a little bit more, I don't know, with a little more infrastructure built up around it, like LND and Alby Hub or something like that.

Jordan Bravo: So it sounds like the target user [00:45:00] of PhoenixD is probably software developers?

Stephen DeLorme: Yeah, that's a good question. I actually don't know what the target audience is for it. I think the initial post for it was just something like, "We got a lot of people asking if they could run Phoenix on a server. So here's the binary." It's, I think they just like, I think they, I, I mean I think they might have actually just like tweaked something. It's supposed to be exactly like the phone stuff, but it has this like CLI interface wrapped it on, but I think otherwise it's supposed to be like the same logic under the hood as the phone app. So I think it's just like, I think they just get it because people ask for it. I don't really know who it's targeted at.

Jordan Bravo: Interesting. Yeah, I'd be, I'd be curious to know what the users or the use case is for it. It sounds like you use it on the CLI when you're working on web apps that need a lightning node and it makes it easy.

Stephen DeLorme: Yeah, totally. because like, I mean, I, I was teaching a lightning workshop this past weekend. I set up Phoenix D, LNBits. I had the whole class using that, I think, uh, L [00:46:00] tor, the project that, um, won the lightning track at the Bitcoin 2024 last year. The guy who made that one, I think Nick Ti, think, used PhoenixD for that as well.

It's like a Tor network that you pay over lightning and, Yeah, he just, it was, you know, like super easy, you know, download it and run the binary. So I think for developers it's like a super easy, you know, quick install, but depends on your use case.

Jordan Bravo: Cool. Okay. This whole topic of lightning in general and running your own lightning node and all the different use cases and extension software that goes in conjunction with lightning is a really deep topic. We've only just scratched the surface here today, so if you are interested in knowing anything particular further, please let us know. You can do that via Boost or you can email us. And we will be getting a matrix room coming soon. I'm gonna keep plugging that and let you know when it is actually available and how you can access that.

All right. [00:47:00] We are now gonna get into user feedback. We had somebody comment on the episode on mobile operating systems and @shaigluskin1225 says, Jordan, "Great video, but you got one thing wrong regarding purchasing used slash refurbished. There is a difference between carrier unlocked and factory unlocked. For example, let's say I bought a Pixel 7 from ATT on a plan. It's factory locked and carrier locked. Once I paid it off in full, I can request carrier unlocking from ATT. Once accomplished, the phone is now usable with other carriers and on used sites will be listed as unlocked. But you won't be able to unlock the bootloader and install GrapheneOS on that phone. The setting for "OEM unlocking" is permanently grayed out on any phone that was ever factory locked. The only used pixels that will work are ones that [00:48:00] were carrier unlocked when they were originally purchased. If they were ever carrier locked, then the phone is factory locked against unlocking the bootloader. Used sites don't tell you whether the phone is factory unlocked. Only that it is carrier unlocked. So in most cases, one will need to buy a new pixel that is carrier unlocked in order to install GrapheneOS."

Okay, so if I'm understanding this feedback correctly, there's kind of two levels of unlocking. And when you go to a, a used site such as Swappa, which is what I discussed in that episode on, on, uh, mobile operating systems.

If, if it says unlocked, that's only referring to carrier unlocked, but they actually will not have any way of, of telling you whether it's factory unlocked. And in order to be able to unlock the bootloader to flash something like GrapheneOS and then relock it and need a phone that has factory unlocked, carrier [00:49:00] unlocked is not enough. Does that sound like what this?

Stephen DeLorme: Yeah.

Jordan Bravo: ShaiGlueskin is saying?

Stephen DeLorme: Yeah. Yeah, I think so.

Jordan Bravo: Okay. Well, I did not know that. Great feedback. Thank you for writing in and letting us know about that. So I guess the takeaway there is make sure you're getting a factory unlocked phone, and if you are buying it used, you have to kind of guess or it's sort of a crapshoot because they're not gonna make that clear upfront.

Stephen DeLorme: Yeah. I guess if you were like buying it from a friend or something, then, then you would be able to determine that upfront when you're buying it. So, and maybe, maybe to refine that slightly, it's that, you know, if, if you're planning on buying a used phone in order to, you know, put Graphos on there, then you need to be able to see the phone and verify that it's actually factory unlocked, you know, before you make the purchase, which you can do in person with your friends, you can't always do that, uh, with one of these swapping sites.

Jordan Bravo: Right? [00:50:00] And if you want to know how to do it, go to grapheneos.org, under their installation instructions. They're gonna walk you through how to unlock the bootloader. And in that first step, you'll, you'll be able to go to that option. If the option is grayed out, you know that it's locked. And you can't unlock it. If it's, if you are able to do it, then you're good to go and it's factory unlocked.

Stephen DeLorme: Cool.

Jordan Bravo: Alright. Thanks everybody and we'll see you next time.

Stephen DeLorme: Catch you later.

Hey, thanks for listening. I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you want to learn more about anything that we discussed, you can look for links in the show notes that should be in your podcast player, or you can go to atlbitlab.com/podcast. On a final note, if you found this information useful and you want to help support us, you can always send us a tip in Bitcoin.

Your support really helps us so that we can keep bringing you content like this. All right. Catch you [00:51:00] later.

Bitcoin Sovereignty: Running Your Own Full Node - The Sovereign Computing Show (SOV014)

Tuesday, May 13, 2025

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