Core Lightning v25.02: 'Onion Packet Filler Accreditation'

"We are pleased to announce the launch of Core Lightning v25.02. Named “Onion Packet Filler Accreditation” by contributor Se7enZ and led by release captain Alex Myers, this release is focused on maintenance, building upon v24.11 to further improve the stability and functionality of Core Lightning," announced the project.

• The highlights of the release include channel backups for penalty transaction generation, more stable XPAY plugin integration, addresses blinded paths on BOLT12 invoices, and enhances gRPC and REST access with onion messages and channel state change notifications, among other things.
• This release enhances static channel backups by adding key information to the shachain and peer's basepoints, enabling the construction of penalty transactions if a peer uses an outdated state. This completes the recovery process, effectively turning each peerstorage peer into a watchtower for your channels.

NOTE: The reproducible build is currently non-deterministic because of the new clnrest plugin's compilation step. "We don't want that to hold up the release, however. The issue is known and will be addressed in a subsequent point release," was stated in the release notes.

• Explore open CLN bounties here.

What's new

Highlights for users

• The chanbackup plugin now effectively turns each peerstorage peer into watchtower by allowing user's node to generate penalty transactions.
• Blacklisted runes can now be restored via relist, improving channel management.
• Many bug fixes for XPAY plugin for seamless compatibility when using xpay-handle-pay configuration.
• The lightning-cli now has a cleaner help output, and doesn't crash occasionally on XPAY notifications.
• setconfig enhances security by using a separate config.setconfig file for runtime changes. Users can also now set transient=true if they don't want the config files changed.
• Fixed an issue preventing the collection of funds from force-closed channels leased with the --experimental-dual-fund flag.

Highlights for the network

• Enhanced splicing with stricter checking for better interoperability with Eclair.

Highlights for developers

• clnrest has been implemented as Rust plugin for optimized performance.
• The listpeerchannels command now contains fields their_max_htlc_value_in_flight and our_max_htlc_value_in_flight for more precise calculation of channel limits.
• New notifications plugin_stopped and plugin_started for better real-time monitoring.
• fetchinvoice now has BIP353 DNS payment instruction support.

Share your feedback on the Build On L2 forum and stay connected with the Core Lightning team on X, Telegram, and Discord.

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