Voltage FAQ

have questions? we've got all the answers if you don't find your question on this page, please send us an email at support\@voltage cloud we'll get you an answer as soon as we can what lightning network node software do you run? currently all of our nodes run the lightning labs developed lightning network daemon (lnd) https //github com/lightningnetwork/lnd implimentaiton the project is very well supported and has many integrations and applications written for it do you provide lightning node management software? the primary management dashboard that we offer is currently thunderhub which is a very robust tool for node management for most use cases with your node's macaroons and tls certificate (which is provided on your voltage dashboard) you are able to remotely connect and manage your node externally as well you can connect to the lnd apis directly from your node's api endpoint you can see the lnd api specification here https //api lightning community https //api lightning community what's the difference between your service plans? essentials plan this is the free plan and it comes with a single user and 50,000 api calls this plan does not have any lightning capabilities this includes community support via our discord starter plan this is plan comes with 2 users, 250,000 api calls, and 2 compute credits this is enough to run a single standard node this includes ticket support during business hours growth plan this is plan comes with 5 users, 1,000,000 api calls, and 10 compute credits this is enough to run a single professional node or 5 standard nodes this includes ticket support during business hours scale plan this is plan comes with 10 users, 5,000,000 api calls, and 30 compute credits this is enough to run a 3 professional nodes or 15 standard nodes with this plan you can also received a whiteglove onboarding to help you get started this includes ticket support and chat support via slack during business hours enterprise plan this plan is custom quoted based on what the customer needs this can include unlimited api calls, users, and compute credits this plan includes infrastructure and support slas, complete node management from our team, custom solutions, and 24/7 ticket and chat support what is the difference between a standard and professional node type? a standard node uses tor to peer with others on the lightning network and a professional node is provisioned with a unique ip address and a dedicated server the api endpoints for both types are clearnet professional node types will be more performant and reliable than standard due to not having to rely soley on tor professional nodes include both tor and clearnet ip address peer connections what support do you offer under which plans? essentials community support ( discord ) starter and growth ticket support ( voltage cloud/support ) scale ticket and joint slack channel support does "wallet unlock required" on my voltage node mean i have to stay online all the time to unlock the wallet for customer transactions? no if you see "running" in your node dashboard header, then the node is completely online you do not need to unlock if the node is running, as in this context unlocking means you are providing proof that you have access to some specific sensitive functionality of the node the dashboard can be in a locked state and fully functional as long as it is in the "running" status how do i upgrade my node type? go to your node's home dashboard click my node then node size change the size (standard, professional, etc ) how do i restart my node? go to your node's home dashboard click "stop node" after the node is fully stopped, click "start node" be sure to unlock the node after restart your node will also restart when you change a node setting how do i update my node version? go to your node's home dashboard click node settings at the bottom of your settings you will see update information how do i download files from my node? click "backup & export" from your home node dashboard select export data choose the type of data you are looking to export and click the export button what is the difference between compute and api credits? compute credits are used to deploy and maintain node infrastructure standard nodes require 2 compute credits professional nodes require 10 compute credits as for api credits, at voltage you pay for what you use every time you access the node with an api call, whether it's from the command line, processing a datapoint with surge analytics, or using a tool like thunderhub, this uses an api credit what if i run out of api credits before my next billing cycle? if you use more than what your plan allows, we do not stop you from going over an additional 50,000 api credits is $25, and will automatically be added to your bill at end of month does an external hosted lnd node pointed at voltage hosted btcpayserver use api credits? no does voltage do any compaction of channel database? we don't compact a database for you or on an ongoing basis however, we have a setting for your node called 'auto compaction' what this does is that it enables the auto compaction flag in lnd when this is set, every time your node starts up it will attempt to compact your database files (maximum once every 24 hours) this can be used to run a compaction on your database inside of voltage please be aware that enabling this flag does add additional time to a node starting up can i buy or sell bitcoin on your site? no, we do not offer services for you to buy or sell bitcoin on our site to fund your wallet, you must purchase bitcoin from somewhere else (like an exchange) and fund your node from there you can use the send/receive option in your thunderhub dashboard to send funds from an exchange do you use neutrino or a full bitcoin node? we have had the option of neutrino in the past but as of february 2024, we no longer offer nodes backed by neutrino all nodes since february 2024 are ran completely on a full bitcoin node for on chain data do you save my wallet seed, passwords, or macaroons? we do not save any of your wallet passwords, seeds, or macaroons in a format we're able to view we do backup your macaroons and seed, however they are encrypted with your wallet's password client side before upload therefore, we are never able to see the contents backing up macaroons can help in the event of losing a macaroon, but it also makes certain parts of our dashboard (like generating a 'lndconnect' code) much easier to use when initializing or unlocking your node the request goes straight from your device to your node's api can you recover my seed or password if i lose it? no, we do not keep a copy of your node's password and seed backups are encrypted with that password if you lose your seed or password, we do not have the ability to recover it how do i download files from my node? all nodes have the ability to export their files these files include channel backup, tls cert, lnd log, and full (meaning all files) you can export these files by going to your node in our dashboard and clicking the 'export data' button you will be prompted to select which type of export you want to create select the type and click 'start export' if you are requesting a 'full' export your node must be in a 'stopped' state an export will be generated and ready to download please be aware that the download links for your exports are only valid for 1 hour you must create a new export if the link expires do you support tor? we support tor for peer to peer traffic all voltage nodes have tor enabled from the start and you can't turn this off api traffic is clearnet for all nodes using their own unique api endpoint can i take my voltage export files and run them on my own? no, it's possible you'll encounter problems this can be things like architecture differences or running the same node in two places how does the ip whitelisting work? the ip addresses that you supply in your whitelist are the ips that are allowed to talk to your node all other traffic is denied if you do not specify a whitelist then your node's api is open to the entire internet this whitelist is applied to both the grpc and rest apis why am i getting an error that my node name already exists? node names are globally unique for the network if alice created a node called 'foo' on testnet then bob could not create a node with the same name on testnet however, bob could create a node called 'foo' on mainnet, assuming it's not taken by someone else node names also must be made up of only numbers, lowercase letters, and dashes how do i change my account email or password? on your team selection page, click your avatar in the upper right corner, and then click account from there click the "change" button next to email to change your account emailor password do you use self signed tls certificates? no, all voltage nodes receive a valid tls certificate that's signed by a trusted certificate authority this means you don't have to supply a copy of the tls certificate when connecting to your node (assuming your application supports it) my node says it's not synced to the chain or graph what do i do? if your node is not synced to the chain or graph for more than 6 hours, we recommend a node restart if this is a persistent issue please fill out a quick support ticket at voltage cloud/support i got an email that my node is ready to be unlocked, but i didn't restart it why is that? if you receive an email stating your node is waiting to be unlocked but you didn't update or restart the node then it's likely something went wrong in our system rest assured, we get alerts every time this happens and we will work to prevent it from happening again we don't know your password, therefore we can't do an automatic unlocking for you thus we notify you so you can unlock your node because it's required for your node to be unlocked to function do you monitor my node's health? we monitor every piece of infrastructure that we can we get alerted whenever there's a problem and we have 24/7 support for our infrastructure however, because we don't have your macaroons, that means we can't actually see what's going on inside of your node it's important for you to also monitor your node to track what's going on inside of lnd do you modify lnd? no, we use the binary directly provided from the lightning terminal releases we do not do any modiciations to the source code or binaries