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How to clusterize your Eclair node

Eclair allows you to scale up one logical lightning node across multiple servers.

Front servers take care of routing table related gossip and syncing requests from peers, which is cpu/bandwidth intensive. The backend server can focus on core channel management. So, BOLT 1&7 messages are handled in the frontend, while BOLT 2 messages go through and are processed in the backend.

Front servers are stateless, they can be stopped/killed at will. The node will remain operational and reachable as long as there is at least one frontend available.

                +---+     +-----------+
                |   |     | +-------+ |
                |   |-----|-|       | |
       P   -----| L |-----|-| FRONT |-|---,
       U        | O |-----|-|       | |    \
       B     ---| A |     | +-------+ |     \
       L        | D |     |           |      \
       I        |   |     | +-------+ |       \ +------+
       C   -----| B |-----|-|       | |        `|      |
                | A |-----|-| FRONT |-|---------| BACK |<-- channels management
       N        | L |-----|-|       | |        ,|      |    relay logic
       E    ----| A |     | +-------+ |       / +------+
       T        | N |     |           |      /
       W        | C |     | +-------+ |     /
       O        | E |-----|-|       | |    /
       R   -----| R |-----|-| FRONT |-|---'
       K        |   |-----|-|       |<------- connection management
                |   |     | +-------+ |       routing table sync
                +---+     +-----------+

The goal is to offload your node from connection and routing table management:

  • incoming connections
  • outgoing connections
  • gossip queries + pings
  • incoming gossip aggregation
  • outgoing gossip dispatch (rebroadcast)

Prerequisite

You already have a node up and running in a standalone setup (with Bitcoin Core properly configured, etc.).

You know what your node id is.

In the following, what we previously called eclair-node will be called backend. It is to be launched, configured and backed-up exactly like in a standalone setup.

Minimal/Demo setup

Use this if you want to experiment with the cluster mode on a single local server.

Set the following values in .eclair/eclair.conf:

akka.actor.provider = cluster
akka.extensions = ["akka.cluster.pubsub.DistributedPubSub"]

// replace this with your node id
// if you don't know what your node id is, you should probably stop right here
eclair.front.pub = 03...............

Start the backend:

$ ./eclair-node.sh

Then run an instance of frontend:

$ ./eclair-front.sh -Dakka.remote.artery.canonical.port=25521 -Declair.server.port=9736

NB: we override the ports, otherwise they would conflict since in this example everything runs on the same server. You can run multiple frontends on the same server, just make sure to change the ports.

Production setup

In production you should:

  • run multiple frontends
  • run one app per server
  • enable tcp-tls to encrypt communications between members of the cluster with your own generated certificate (see below)
  • use a load balancer to hide all your frontend servers under the same ip address
  • set firewall rules to disable lightning connections (port 9735) on your backend server, so all connections go through the frontend
  • enable monitoring
  • on AWS, use AWS Secrets Manager (see AWS deployment)

Enable encrypted communication for the cluster

We use a self-signed certificate, which offers a good compromise. More advanced options are available, see akka doc.

Have a single set of keys and a single certificate for all nodes and disable hostname checking

  • The single set of keys and the single certificate is distributed to all nodes. The certificate can be self-signed as it is distributed both as a certificate for authentication but also as the trusted certificate.
  • If the keys/certificate are lost, someone else can connect to your cluster.
  • Adding nodes to the cluster is simple as the key material can be deployed / distributed to the new node.

Generate a self-signed certificate (set a strong password):

$ keytool -genkeypair -v \
          -keystore akka-cluster-tls.jks \
          -dname "O=ACME, C=FR" \
          -keypass:env <password> \
          -storepass:env <password> \
          -keyalg RSA \
          -keysize 4096 \
          -validity 9999

Copy the resulting certificate to your .eclair directory:

$ cp akka-cluster-tls.jks ~/.eclair

Add this to your eclair.conf:

AKKA_TLS_PASSWORD=<password>
akka.remote.artery.transport = "tls-tcp"

AWS Deployment

For convenience, we provide a prebuilt AWS Beanstalk bundle for the frontend (choose a WebServer environment type, and Java platform).

You can run it as-is for testing.

TLS encryption

If you intend to use it in production, you need to enable encryption with your own certificate:

  1. Follow the procedure above to generate your akka-tls.jks

  2. We recommend forking the project and building your own bundle:

$ git clone git@github.com:ACINQ/eclair.git
$ vi eclair-core/src/main/reference.conf # set akka.remote.artery.transport = "tls-tcp"
$ cp akka-cluster-tls.jks eclair-front/modules/awseb/ # copy the file you generated
$ vi eclair-front/modules/awseb.xml # uncomment the relevant parts
$ mvn package -DskipTests

Alternatively, you can also edit the existing bundle and manually add the akka-cluster-tls.jks file to the root of the zip archive. You will also need to set akka.remote.artery.transport=tls-tcp at runtime.

Private key

In production, we highly recommend using AWS Secrets manager to provide the node private key. This is done by setting eclair.front.priv-key-provider=aws-sm. Default secret name is "node-priv-key", but it is configurable with eclair.front.aws-sm.priv-key-name

Configuration

We recommend using Beanstalk environment variables for AKKA_TLS_PASSWORD, BACKEND_IP, and NODE_PUB_KEY. Other configuration keys should be set in the AKKA_CONF environment variable, semicolon separated. Example:

  • AKKA_CONF: eclair.enable-kamon=true; akka.remote.artery.transport=tls-tcp; eclair.front.priv-key-provider=aws-sm...
  • AKKA_TLS_PASSWORD: xxxxxxxx
  • BACKEND_IP: 1.2.3.4
  • NODE_PUB_KEY: 03933884aaf1d6b108397e5efe5c86bcf2d8ca8d2f700eda99db9214fc2712b134

Port 25520 needs to be open, within the Beanstalk security group, and between the Beanstalk security group and your backend node.

Tor

We recommend running your Tor hidden service on a separate server, and use eclair.tor.targets to redirect clearnet(*) connections to your frontend servers.

(*) Clearnet for Tor, but BOLT 8 encrypted.

Here is the resulting architecture:

                             +---+     +-----------+
                             |   |     | +-------+ |
                             |   |-----|-|       | |
       P                -----| L |-----|-| FRONT |-|---,
       U                     | O |-----|-|       | |    \
       B                  ---| A |     | +-------+ |     \
       L                     | D |     |           |      \
       I                     |   |     | +-------+ |       \ +------+
       C              -------| B |-----|-|       | |        `|      |
                             | A |-----|-| FRONT |-|---------| BACK |<-- channels management
       N                     | L |-----|-|       | |        ,|      |    relay logic
       E                 ----| A |     | +-------+ |       / +------+
       T                     | N |     |           |      /
       W      +-------+      | C |     | +-------+ |     /
       O      |       |      | E |-----|-|       | |    /
       R   ---|  Tor  |------| R |-----|-| FRONT |-|---'
       K      |       |      |   |-----|-|       |<------- connection management
              +-------+      |   |     | +-------+ |       routing table sync
                             +---+     +-----------+