FAQ

Is Eclair Wallet a "real" Lightning Node ?

Yes it is. Eclair Wallet is a real, self-contained lightning node that runs on your phone. It does not require you to run another Lightning Node node at home or in the cloud.

Which version of Android is supported by Eclair Wallet ?

Eclair Wallet requires Android 5.0 or higher

Can I receive payments with Eclair Wallet ?

Not yet. Being able to receive payments means that you have to monitor the blockchain and react when your peer publishes an old state, which is both costly to implement and requires to be online typically once a day everyday, which may not be possible for mobile wallets that could be offline for days.

I read that I can lose money if my node goes offline. Is it true ?

No, see above: Eclair Wallet can only send payments so it does not make sense for your peers to try and cheat you, they would publish states that give them less money than the current state.

Is there an iOS version of Eclair Wallet ?

No, and we do not have short term plans to release one.

Can I restore my seed on another bitcoin wallet ?

Yes. Your seed (the 24 words that eclair will display when you start it for the first time) is a standard BIP49 seed, which can be restored on any BIP49 compliant wallet. With Electrum for example, you would choose "I already have a seed", tick the BIP39 checkbox,and then select BIP49.

I already have installed the testnet version of Eclair Wallet. Can I also install the mainnet version ?

Yes, they are 2 different, independent applications, with different identifiers and data directories.

I think I have enough money, but eclair says "None of your Lightning channels has enough balance to send this payment" ?

You cannot send all (or almost all) of your balance, you have to keep some of it:

• you need to maintain a reserve (which you can see in the "Channel Details" view when you select a channel)
• and you must also keep enough funds to pay for the on-chain bitcoin fees (the state of your channel has to be publishable, this is what enables you to close your channels whenever you want even if the peer you are connected to is gone).

My channel was closed uncooperatively. Are my funds locked ? Do I need to do something to get them back ?

There are 2 ways 2 close a channel:

• mutual, or cooperative: both nodes are online and negociate a final onchain fee and publish a tx that immediately sends their funds back to their bitcoin wallet
• unilateral or uncooperative: one node decides to close the channel (because the other node is not responding, or sent a bad message, ...). The node that closed the channel must wait until the closing tx has been confirmed a number of times (typically 144 confirmations, equivalent to 1 day, but it can be much more and this delay is set by the peer you connect to) before it can spend it and return the funds to the node's bitcoin wallet. This is automated and you don't have anything to do, eclair will monitor the blockchain and return the funds to your wallet as soon as possible. Of course you need to start the app for this to work.

Once the transaction that returns funds to your bitcoin wallet has been confirmed the channel will disappear from the channels tab.

Is it safe to delete the app, reinstall it and restore the seed ? Will I recover all my funds ?

You will recover all your onchain funds, but you will not recover the funds in your open channels You must close your channels first. If one of the peers you are connected to is gone and you must "force close" the channels you've opened with them then you must wait until the closing transactions has been spent and the funds returned to your wallet (see the answser to the question above) .