Core Lightning v24.08: 'Steel Backed-up Channels'

Core Lightning is a lightweight, highly customizable and standard compliant implementation of the Lightning Network protocol.

• BOLT12 offers now support self-payments and blinded paths. The pay plugin has enhanced capacity checks, error handling, and logging. Renepay plugin updates include a probability cost function and exclude option for better routing control.
• Improvements in I/O optimization, documentation, gossipd, and reckless ensure the best Core Lightning experience, was stated in a blog post.

"We extend our heartfelt thanks to the 21 contributors who made the v24.08 release possible with their 378 commits since the last update. Your commitment to enhancing CLN is invaluable, and we are grateful for your ongoing support."

What's new

Highlights for Users

• pay now checks for sufficient spendable capacity before computing a route and returns a clear error message if there isn't enough capacity.
• offers can now self-fetch and self-pay BOLT12 offers and invoices.
• offers automatically adds a blinded path from a peer if we have no public channels, and supports setting a blinded path for invoicerequest if we're an unannounced node.
• renepay now prunes the network by disabling undesired channels, un-reserves routes after use, and introduces a new exclude option for channels & nodes to be excluded from routing.
• Whitespace at the end of (most) options will not complain anymore.
• I/O optimizations to significantly speed up larger nodes.

Highlights for the Network

• pay can now pay to bolt12 invoices if entry to blinded hop is specified as a short_channel_id.
• We can now open unannounced channels with LND nodes again.
• Onion messages are now supported by default and can be forwarded using short_channel_id.
• We now request all gossip from the first peer and immediately send updated gossip to current peers instead of waiting for reconnections.
• Recurring offers had incompatible changes, it will not work against older versions.

Highlights for Developers

• New experimental plugin askrene accesses min-cost-flow route calculations.
• pay plugin now includes enhanced logging and improved error codes, and emits channel_hint_updated notifications to share inferred balances across payments.
• New reckless-rpc plugin allows to issue commands to reckless over rpc.
• Plugin manager reckless now supports installing Rust plugins, accepts JSON array input and, provides JSON output with the -j/--json option flag.
• bookkeeper now listens for two new custom events: utxo_deposit and utxo_spend.

For a list of all changes, please see the changelog.

"As always, we encourage you to share your thoughts and feedback on the Build On L2 forum, where you can engage in detailed discussions with fellow developers and node operators."

Connect with Core Lightning team on X, Telegram, or Discord, and stay tuned to the Blockstream YouTube channel for upcoming content featuring key Core Lightning contributors discussing the new release in depth.

Blog Post / Archive
GitHub Repo