faraday

README

faraday

Faraday is a suite of tools built to help node operators and businesses run lnd, the leading implementation of the Lightning Network. Faraday’s tools decrease the operational overhead of running a Lightning node and make it easier to build businesses on Lightning. The current features in the Faraday suite provide insight into node channel performance and support for accounting with both on-chain and off-chain reports for lnd.

LND

Note that Faraday requires lnd to be built with all of its subservers and requires running at least v0.11.0. Download the official release binary or see the instructions in the lnd repo for more detailed installation instructions. If you choose to build lnd from source, following command to enable all the relevant subservers:

make install tags="signrpc walletrpc chainrpc invoicesrpc"

Installation

A Makefile is provided. To install faraday and all its dependencies, run:

git clone https://github.com/lightninglabs/faraday.git
cd faraday
make && make install

Usage

Faraday connects to a single instance of lnd. It requires access to macaroons for each subserver and a valid TLS certificate. It will attempt to use the default lnd values if no command line flags are specified.

./faraday                                           \
--lnd.macaroondir={directory containing macaroon}   \
--lnd.tlscertpath={path to lnd cert}                \
--lnd.rpcserver={host:port of lnd's rpcserver} 

By default, faraday runs on mainnet. The --network flag can be used to run in test environments.

Authentication and transport security

The gRPC and REST connections of faraday are encrypted with TLS and secured with macaroon authentication the same way lnd is.

If no custom faraday directory is set then the TLS certificate is stored in ~/.faraday/<network>/tls.cert and the base macaroon in ~/.faraday/<network>/faraday.macaroon.

The frcli command will pick up these file automatically on mainnet if no custom faraday directory is used. For other networks it should be sufficient to add the --network flag to tell the CLI in what sub directory to look for the files.

For more information on macaroons, see the macaroon documentation of lnd.

NOTE: Faraday's macaroons are independent from lnd's. The same macaroon cannot be used for both faraday and lnd.

Chain Backend

Faraday offers node accounting services which require access to a Bitcoin node with --txindex set so that it can perform transaction lookup. Currently the CloseReport endpoint requires this connection, and will fail if it is not present. It is strongly recommended to provide this connection when utilizing the NodeAudit endpoint, but it is not required. This connection is optional, and all other endpoints will function if it is not configured.

To connect Faraday to bitcoind:

--connect_bitcoin                       \
--bitcoin.host={host:port of bitcoind}  \
--bitcoin.user={bitcoind username}      \
--bitcoin.password={bitcoind  password}

To connect Faraday to btcd:

--connect_bitcoin                   \
--bitcoin.host={host:port of btcd}  \
--bitcoin.user={btcd username}      \
--bitcoin.password={btcd password}  \
--bitcoin.usetls                    \
--bitcoin.tlspath={path to btcd cert}

RPCServer

Faraday serves requests over grpc by default on localhost:8465. This default can be overwritten:

--rpclisten={host:port to listen for requests}

Cli Tool

The RPC server can be conveniently accessed using a command line tool.

1. Run faraday as detailed above

./frcli {command}

Commands

• insights: expose metrics gathered for one or many channels.
• revenue: generate a revenue report over a time period for one or many channels.
• outliers: close recommendations based whether channels are outliers based on a variety of metrics.
• threshold: close recommendations based on thresholds a variety of metrics.
• nodeaudit: produce an accounting report for your node over a period of time, please see the accounting documentation for details. Chain backend strongly recommended, fee entries for channel closes and sweeps will be missing if a chain connection is not provided.
• fiat: get the USD price for an amount of Bitcoin at a given time, currently obtained from CoinCap's historical price API.
• closereports: provides a channel specific fee report, including fees paid on chain. This endpoint is currently only implemented for cooperative closes. Requires chain backend.

Metrics currently tracked

The following metrics are tracked in faraday and exposed via insights and used for outliers and threshold close recommendations.

• Uptime
• Revenue
• Total Volume
• Incoming Volume
• Outgoing Volume

Development

If you would like to contribute to Faraday, please see our issues page for currently open issues. If a feature that you would like to add is not covered by an existing issue, please open an issue to discuss the proposed addition. Contributions are hugely appreciated, and we will do our best to review pull requests timeously.

Tests

To run all the unit tests in the repo:

make check

To run Faraday's itests locally, you will need docker installed. To run all itests:

make itest

Individual itests can also be run using:

./run_itest.sh {test name}

Documentation

Overview

Package faraday contains the main function for faraday.

Index

• Constants
• Variables
• func Main() error
• func UseLogger(logger btclog.Logger)
• func ValidateConfig(config *Config) error
• func Version() string
• type Config
  • func DefaultConfig() Config
• type LndConfig

Constants

const (
	DefaultNetwork = "mainnet"
)

const Subsystem = "FRDY"

Subsystem defines the logging code for this subsystem.

Variables

var (
	// FaradayDirBase is the default main directory where faraday stores its
	// data.
	FaradayDirBase = btcutil.AppDataDir("faraday", false)

	// DefaultTLSCertFilename is the default file name for the autogenerated
	// TLS certificate.
	DefaultTLSCertFilename = "tls.cert"

	// DefaultTLSKeyFilename is the default file name for the autogenerated
	// TLS key.
	DefaultTLSKeyFilename = "tls.key"

	// DefaultTLSCertPath is the default full path of the autogenerated TLS
	// certificate.
	DefaultTLSCertPath = filepath.Join(
		FaradayDirBase, DefaultNetwork, DefaultTLSCertFilename,
	)

	// DefaultTLSKeyPath is the default full path of the autogenerated TLS
	// key.
	DefaultTLSKeyPath = filepath.Join(
		FaradayDirBase, DefaultNetwork, DefaultTLSKeyFilename,
	)

	// DefaultMacaroonFilename is the default file name for the
	// autogenerated faraday macaroon.
	DefaultMacaroonFilename = "faraday.macaroon"

	// DefaultMacaroonPath is the default full path of the base faraday
	// macaroon.
	DefaultMacaroonPath = filepath.Join(
		FaradayDirBase, DefaultNetwork, DefaultMacaroonFilename,
	)
)

var Commit string

Commit stores the current commit hash of this build, this should be set using the -ldflags during compilation.

Functions

func Main

func Main() error

Main is the real entry point for faraday. It is required to ensure that defers are properly executed when os.Exit() is called.

func UseLogger

func UseLogger(logger btclog.Logger)

UseLogger uses a specified Logger to output package logging info. This should be used in preference to SetLogWriter if the caller is also using btclog.

func ValidateConfig

func ValidateConfig(config *Config) error

ValidateConfig sanitizes all file system paths and makes sure no incompatible configuration combinations are used.

func Version

func Version() string

Version returns the application version as a properly formed string per the semantic versioning 2.0.0 spec (http://semver.org/).

Types

type Config

type Config struct {
	// Lnd holds the configuration options for the connection to lnd.
	Lnd *LndConfig `group:"lnd" namespace:"lnd"`

	// FaradayDir is the main directory where faraday stores all its data.
	FaradayDir string `` /* 151-byte string literal not displayed */

	// ChainConn specifies whether to attempt connecting to a bitcoin backend.
	ChainConn bool `` /* 161-byte string literal not displayed */

	ShowVersion bool `long:"version" description:"Display version information and exit"`

	// MinimumMonitored is the minimum amount of time that a channel must be monitored for before we consider it for termination.
	MinimumMonitored time.Duration `` /* 163-byte string literal not displayed */

	// Network is a string containing the network we're running on.
	Network string `long:"network" description:"The network to run on." choice:"regtest" choice:"testnet" choice:"mainnet" choice:"simnet"`

	// DebugLevel is a string defining the log level for the service either
	// for all subsystems the same or individual level by subsystem.
	DebugLevel string `long:"debuglevel" description:"Debug level for faraday and its subsystems."`

	TLSCertPath        string   `long:"tlscertpath" description:"Path to write the TLS certificate for faraday's RPC and REST services."`
	TLSKeyPath         string   `long:"tlskeypath" description:"Path to write the TLS private key for faraday's RPC and REST services."`
	TLSExtraIPs        []string `long:"tlsextraip" description:"Adds an extra IP to the generated certificate."`
	TLSExtraDomains    []string `long:"tlsextradomain" description:"Adds an extra domain to the generated certificate."`
	TLSAutoRefresh     bool     `long:"tlsautorefresh" description:"Re-generate TLS certificate and key if the IPs or domains are changed."`
	TLSDisableAutofill bool     `` /* 174-byte string literal not displayed */

	MacaroonPath string `long:"macaroonpath" description:"Path to write the macaroon for faraday's RPC and REST services if it doesn't exist."`

	// RPCListen is the listen address for the faraday rpc server.
	RPCListen string `long:"rpclisten" description:"Address to listen on for gRPC clients."`

	// RESTListen is the listen address for the faraday REST server.
	RESTListen string `long:"restlisten" description:"Address to listen on for REST clients. If not specified, no REST listener will be started."`

	// CORSOrigin specifies the CORS header that should be set on REST responses. No header is added if the value is empty.
	CORSOrigin string `long:"corsorigin" description:"The value to send in the Access-Control-Allow-Origin header. Header will be omitted if empty."`

	// Bitcoin is the configuration required to connect to a bitcoin node.
	Bitcoin *chain.BitcoinConfig `group:"bitcoin" namespace:"bitcoin"`
}

func DefaultConfig

func DefaultConfig() Config

DefaultConfig returns all default values for the Config struct.

type LndConfig

type LndConfig struct {
	// RPCServer is host:port that lnd's RPC server is listening on.
	RPCServer string `long:"rpcserver" description:"host:port that LND is listening for RPC connections on"`

	// MacaroonDir is the directory containing macaroons.
	MacaroonDir string `long:"macaroondir" description:"Dir containing macaroons"`

	// TLSCertPath is the path to the tls cert that faraday should use.
	TLSCertPath string `long:"tlscertpath" description:"Path to TLS cert"`
}