I completed the full Bitcoin Core download by taking part in NotATether's challenge. So now my Bitcoin Core is synced, right? But when I run LND for the first time, it says synced graph: false. I've waited, but it never changes to synced graph: true. What am I missing?
You should connect to like 4-5 peers at once. I mean, I saw you tried connecting manually, but maybe that’s not enough. Also, running the node on Tor could help a bit, and connecting to some public nodes might improve things too.
Your node looks fine from what you shared. Bitcoin Core is synced and LND seems to be in sync too. Just a heads up though, synced_to_graph isn’t a sign everything's healthy. It only turns true when LND has synced the Lightning gossip graph fully. If you don’t have open channels, it can take forever or not happen at all. Seeing PASSIVE_SYNC is totally normal.
Honestly, the easiest fix is to run a full Bitcoin Core node. A pruned node doesn’t save all the old block data, so it can't sync the graph properly. You’re gonna need about 750+ GB for a full node, but then your peers should connect automatically, and opening channels becomes much simpler.
I think storage isn't the main issue. If you check your LND log files, you’ll notice they try to sync the graph using the Gossip protocol. The problem is that if your connected peers don’t see any valid channels from your end, they’ll drop the connection. No active channel means no gossip for you. It’s a cycle.
I’ve tried connecting via Tor, manual connections, and even VPNs. It’s strange because I saw in the thread that it connected via Tor and showed synced graph: true. Running a full node just seems like the easiest way to sort these problems out. Just letting you know, if you want to go full node, you definitely need enough storage.