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name: lightning-lsp description: | LSP (Lightning Service Provider) specifications: BLIPs, JIT channels, on-pay channel open, MPP-trampoline, BOLT12 hosted invoice. Major LSPs: ACINQ (Phoenix backend), Olympus by ZEUS, Megalith, Flashsats, Magma. USE WHEN: integrating with an LSP, designing LSP services, evaluating LSP options for a wallet. allowed-tools: Read, Grep, Glob

LSPs (Lightning Service Providers)

LSPs solve the inbound liquidity problem: a new Lightning user has no inbound capacity — they can't receive without first opening a channel. LSPs offer hosted, JIT, or "channel-on-pay" services.

Service types

Static channel-open (paid)

• Customer pays LSP a fee (sats) for a fixed inbound capacity.
• Typically dual-funded or zero-conf.

JIT (Just-in-Time) channels

• Customer requests an invoice.
• LSP intercepts the payment and opens a channel during the payment flow, paying out via the new channel.
• Customer needs no pre-existing channel.

Typical fee: 1-2% of channel amount, deducted from payment.

Liquidity ads (BOLT 9 features)

• LSP advertises liquidity for sale on Lightning gossip.
• Customers buy via dual-funded channel open.

MPP-trampoline routing

• LSP runs trampoline node.
• Mobile clients route through LSP without full graph knowledge.

BLIP-50+ specifications

BLIPs (Bitcoin Lightning Improvement Proposals) at github.com/lightning/blips. As of September 2026 the blips master tree carries exactly four LSPS specs, all Status: Active:

• BLIP-50 / LSPS0: LSP Spec Transport Layer. Not an API — the transport. JSON-RPC 2.0 objects carried in BOLT 8 custom peer messages with message ID 37913. Defines one method, lsps0.list_protocols (params {}), whose spec example result is {"protocols":[1,3]} — illustrative only, as there is no LSPS3 (see below). LSPs may advertise with feature bit 729 (option_supports_lsps).
• BLIP-51 / LSPS1: Channel Requests — buy a channel outright. lsps1.get_info, lsps1.create_order, lsps1.get_order.
• BLIP-52 / LSPS2: JIT Channel Negotiation. lsps2.get_info, lsps2.buy.
• BLIP-55 / LSPS5: Webhook Registration (merged July 2025). lsps5.set_webhook, lsps5.list_webhooks, lsps5.remove_webhook. Lets a suspended mobile wallet be woken by push when the LSP has something for it (lsps5.payment_incoming, lsps5.expiry_soon, lsps5.onion_message_incoming, ...).

There is no BLIP-53 or BLIP-54.

The LSPS API is not HTTPS and has no API key: it rides the client's existing BOLT 8 connection to the LSP, and the client is authenticated by the node id of that tunnel. A request looks like:

{ "jsonrpc": "2.0",
  "id": "example#3cad6a54d302edba4c9ade2f7ffac098",
  "method": "lsps0.list_protocols",
  "params": {} }

_sat/_msat fields are JSON strings of decimal integers (LSPS0 amount encoding), not JSON numbers.

Major LSPs (status checked September 2026)

LSP	Specialty	Sept 2026 status
ACINQ	Phoenix's hosted backend, splice-on-demand	Active
Olympus by ZEUS	ZEUS wallet backend, JIT + LSPS1 sales	Active
Megalith Node	Public liquidity provider, LSPS1 + LSPS2	Active
Flashsats	LSPS1 channel sales, 1M sat minimum	Active
Magma (Amboss)	Channel-lease marketplace ("Magma V2")	Active
Voltage	Cloud LN nodes; its Flow 2.0 LSP is retired	Not an LSP

"Active" means the provider's public LSPS1 get_info answered in September 2026 — Olympus lsps1.lnolymp.us/api/v1/, Megalith megalithic.me/api/lsps1/v1/, Flashsats lsp.flashsats.xyz/api/v1/ — or, for ACINQ, that the product still ships: Phoenix 2.8.2 (8 September 2026), Eclair v0.14.3 (14 September 2026).

Two corrections to older versions of this list:

• Olympus is run by the ZEUS wallet team, not ZBD. Its JIT endpoint 0conf.lnolymp.us now redirects to flow.zeuslsp.com. ZEUS infrastructure was breached on 5 August 2026; Olympus was back online 8 August and LSP channel services were restored 10 August 2026, with no customer funds lost per ZEUS.
• Voltage no longer sells liquidity. Flow 2.0 is gone from voltage.cloud and from docs.voltage.cloud, which as of September 2026 document managed LND hosting and developer APIs only, plus a notice that as of September 2026 still reads "On August 31, 2026, we will begin sunsetting Voltage's self-serve infrastructure product".

Many LSPs operate via custom HTTP APIs in addition to BLIP-50+: Megalith's own docs note its LSPS1 currently runs over HTTP rather than BOLT 8. Megalith's LSPS2 (JIT) service is on mainnet but its docs still call it not yet production-ready (September 2026).

Mobile wallet / LSP patterns

Phoenix + ACINQ

• Phoenix mobile is the wallet, ACINQ hosts an Eclair node as the customer's "LSP".
• ACINQ auto-splices to maintain liquidity.
• Fees: small per-transaction percentage.

Mutiny + multiple LSPs (historical)

• Mutiny Wallet used LDK and could rotate between LSPs, letting the customer choose an LSP per channel.
• Defunct: the wallet shut down at the end of 2024 and MutinyWallet/mutiny-web is archived on GitHub (last commit September 2024). Only self-hosting the open-source code remains.

Breez SDK

• Spec-driven LSP integration via BLIPs.
• Self-custodial; LSP provides liquidity only.

Channel-open during payment (JIT) flow

1. Customer opens app, requests invoice for 50,000 sats.
2. App talks to LSP: "I need an invoice; here's my static node info."
3. LSP returns:
   - BOLT11 invoice with route_hint pointing through LSP.
   - Promise to open channel on first payment.
4. Customer shares invoice with payer.
5. Payer pays. LSP receives the payment. LSP opens a channel to
   customer with `value = payment - fee`. Forwards remainder via
   the new channel as final HTLC. Channel funded with the inbound
   payment.

Risk: between LSP receiving payment and channel funding tx confirming (zero-conf), customer trusts LSP not to keep funds.

Self-custodial verification

When using an LSP, customer should:

• Verify channel open tx confirms (or has min_depth).
• Monitor channel state (no surprises in commitment).
• Have a watchtower in case LSP cheats.

Common bugs

• LSP fee not communicated to user → user surprised by reduced amount received.
• Race: invoice expiry too short for LSP's channel-open path.
• LSP rejects payment → customer's payer is confused (sees error "incorrect_or_unknown_payment_details" but the invoice was valid).
• Channel close due to LSP cycling: customer needs new channel on next payment, more fees.

See also

• bolts/SKILL.md
• channels/SKILL.md
• consumer-wallets/SKILL.md