Using Bitcoin & the Lightning Network on a mobile Android phone
Note: Lightning is currently in beta. This guide will show you how to use two wallets from different developers on your mobile Android phone simultaneously to become a Bitcoin power user and obtain the best experience
In this guide you will install Samourai Wallet and Bitcoin Lightning Wallet.
The purpose of using Samourai is because it supports every address format for sending and receiving, and is perfect for pairing with BLW in order to have all the features you need for both good UTXO management and power user functionality in a mobile Lightning wallet.
Samourai has a number of great privacy features such as Ricochet and the ability to do reverse coin control, so it is generally a good wallet to have in your arsenal. It also gives you the ability to send and receive to every Bitcoin address format. BLW on the other hand only supports bech32 addresses (native P2WPKH are the least expensive UTXOs to spend). Since bech32 is supported by Samourai, you will be able to send BTC to your Bitcoin Lightning Wallet.
Also Read: Best Bitcoin Hardware Wallets
OpenNode is a web-based point-of-sale platform that supports Lightning and has no fees for accepting LN payments. If you withdraw BTC using LN they also charge no fees. In this guide, you can use OpenNode for testing mainnet LN wallet payments and withdrawals with Bitcoin Lightning Wallet, or services such as Y’alls and LightningSpin.
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Step 1: Install Samourai Wallet and Bitcoin Lightning Wallet
Step 2: Setup your SamouraiWallet:
- Start your new wallet by creating a passphrase using the BIP39 spec. You will need this passphrase along with your 12 word seed phrase to recover your wallet.
- Skip making a PayNymID (you can do it later)
- Set a pin code for opening your wallet
- Go to Settings with the three dots → Wallet → Show mnemonic.
- Write down your 12-word seed mnemonic
- Now you are ready to start sending and receiving with your Samourai Wallet
Step 3: Receive coins to your SamouraiWallet
Click on the blue circle (+) on the main wallet screen. Then click Receive to generate an address to send Bitcoin to.
For receiving Bitcoins to your wallet, SamouraiWallet allows you to generate bech32 addresses, as well as P2SH or P2PKH addresses (1 or 3). You can also send to Bitcoin Lightning Wallet no matter what inputs (UTXOs) your wallet uses.
Once you’ve received some BTC to your SamouraiWallet, then you will send some over to your Bitcoin Lightning. Let’s go ahead and setup BLW.
Step 4: Setup Bitcoin Lightning Wallet with ‘New Wallet’.
Follow the instructions and write down your mnemonic seed phrase. You’ll see that BLW uses the Bech32 addresses for receiving BTC on-chain, which SamouraWallet can send to. There’s basically two different address formats from most user’s perspectives, there are regular addresses and bech32 addresses. Regular addresses can start with a 1 or a 3 and contain a mix of numbers, and upper case and lower case letters.
The second type, bech32 addresses start with bc1 and use a mix of lower case letters and numbers. Because they do not contain a mix of upper case and lower case, they are considered ‘human readable’ — as they can be read over the phone or radio easily. Underneath the QR code you can see the example of a bech32 address the wallet generated for receiving funds:
bc1qax4r46cmkfzd4lh2c7mehy0dh9n0054dsrl8ha (please do not send anything to this address unless you want to consider it burned bitcoins)
After that, you can generate a receiving address such as the one above and send to it from Samourai. Once your transaction is confirmed then you can open a channel.
Step 5: Open a Channel
Before you can spend on the Lightning Network, your opening transaction will need 3 confirmations. When you go to open a channel, the wallet recommends using the ACINQ node, because it supports receiving payments as well. Check out 1ml.com to find other good nodes, such as the Lightning Power Users node run by Lightning application developer Pierre Rochard
Generally, mobile users won’t need more than one or two channels, but you do have the option to open as many as you want. I’d recommend starting with one large channel to ACINQ node, such as $25, just to start playing with Lightning, and from there you can open another channel if necessary directly to a service you think you might use frequently.
Step 6: Make some payments
You’ll need to make some payments, or use a service such as zigzag.io to create incoming channel liquidity before you can receive LN payments. The easiest thing to do is just pay a few satoshis to test something like yalls.org, or go buy a gift card at Bitrefill.
Where LN really shines is in the sub-$100 payments. It is in this range where the majority of Lightning channel liquidity will be, at least until the price of Bitcoin rises which has an exponential liquidity growth effect on the Lightning network.
Now, you can go play some games over at LightningSpin or create an invoice with OpenNode, or send me a tip: https://tippin.me/@BrickstringTech
