How to Back Up Your Lightning Node with LND

Just wanted to share how to back up your Lightning Network node using LND. Seems like LND is the main player here, haven’t really seen anyone besides Blockstream using c-lightning, correct me if I’m wrong.

So, there are two parts to back up LND. First part is the mnemonic phrase. You know, the 24-word BIP39 phrase. LND calls it an "aezeed". This is what you need to restore your on-chain funds, but don’t forget to re-scan.

There are some tools to automate channel backups. Some are better than others, so definitely try a few out and see what works for you. Don’t forget, if your node routes transactions even without you doing anything, you might wanna back up again.

Wait, isn’t there an option in LND to request a remote node to force close if your backup isn’t the latest state? It’d be safer for users unsure about their backups.

Not really sure about that. I think it would need to be included in the RPC console with lncli. And by the way, you can’t see your mnemonic phrase after you create the wallet. Super strange.

Just to clarify, the aezeed isn’t BIP39 compatible. It might use the same wordlist, but that’s about it. If you try checking your recovery words, they won’t match BIP39 checksums. I was so confused at first.

Yeah, the aezeed does store some extra info that BIP39 doesn’t have. Like it’s got versioning and a birthdate based on the Genesis block. It’s more complex than I thought.