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UPDATE 13:38 UTC Saturday 1st August: I have completed the major cut-over work and all seems to be working in my testing. I've turned the site back on and I'm watching it carefully.

Cutting over to a new Lightning node

TL;DR

I am moving @v4vapp off Voltage onto a new Lightning node this weekend.

Work starts in earnest tomorrow. Plan for downtime on Saturday 1 August while production is stopped, rewired, and smoke-tested. Do not start large Hive ↔ sats transfers or depend on Lightning addresses / invoice minting until I post that things are back.

This is the migration I promised after Voltage killed self-serve. Code is ready. The remaining work is ops and config — and that is still a proper chunk of work, not a config flip.

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Why this weekend

Voltage still has a hard end to self-serve. My production node lives there. The path I chose is: keep @v4vapp running, point it at a Lightning node I control (Legion — alias V4VAPP Indigenous), and stop depending on Voltage for day-to-day business.

I have already done the engineering work so the backends understand:

• which node they are talking to
• how not to replay old Lightning history into customer balances
• how the public API and the monitors stay on the same node (if those disagree, deposits never credit)

What is left is the careful bit: stop the pipes, archive the old live event tables, switch credentials, bring everything up in the right order, and test with real money.

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Scale of the work (without the full runbook)

@v4vapp is not one box and a website. For this cutover I have to line up two codebases and a handful of long-running processes that all touch Lightning or the ledger:

Piece	Rough role
backend-v2	gRPC to LND, invoice/payment streams, accounting, Hive monitors
api-ext	public REST for minting/checking invoices (macaroon-based, different path into LND)
lnd_monitor	live subscribe / store of Lightning events
db_monitor	change streams + opening balances + ledger side
hive_monitor	outbound pays from Hive / Keepsats
api / Magi / friends	anything else that still hits LND

If any of those still point at Voltage while others point at Legion, you get the worst kind of bug: silent split brain.

So the weekend is not “change one URL.” It is closer to:

1. Drain the old world — finish open invoices, in-flight pays, and half-done deposits that still need the old parent invoice docs.
2. Stop writers in order — public API first (no new invoices), then Hive pays, then monitors that insert and ledger events. Maintenance window, not a rolling restart.
3. Archive Voltage-era Lightning event collections in Mongo (invoices / payments / htlc_events → dated archive names), leave empty live collections with the same names the code expects. Leave the ledger and Hive history alone — that is the real books.
4. Capture floors on Legion at T0 — so we only process new Legion events forward, not a flood of history as if it were brand-new customer activity.
5. Point every prod config at Legion — YAML + certs/macaroons on the backend host, REST URL + limited macaroon on api-ext, same node identity for ledger (legion, not “pretend we are still voltage”).
6. Bring services up in order — monitor first, then db_monitor (opening balance under External Lightning / legion gets a deliberate look), then hive, then public API.
7. Smoke tests with small real flows — mint, settle inbound, small outbound, decode, admin balances vs node — before I tell anyone it is open season again.

That is a full cutover checklist. It is also why Saturday is the honest day to expect downtime, even if prep runs tomorrow.

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What you will notice

• Possible / planned downtime Saturday 1 August (UTC day — I will update this post with exact windows if I can pin them tighter).
• Invoice minting, LNURL-style deposits, and Keepsats → Lightning pays may simply fail or hang while services are stopped.
• After go-live, new Lightning activity lands under the legion ledger identity. Old Voltage-era external Lightning history stays frozen where it is. Keepsats balances stay continuous — the ledger is still the source of truth for completed work.

If you hold Keepsats: they remain in the books through this. Still, do not park a transfer you need today until I confirm smoke tests passed.

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What this is not

• Not a new frontend feature drop.
• Not a rewrite of Keepsats accounting.
• Not “import all of Voltage history into the new node and hope.”
• Not another feature branch. Code on develop is cutover-ready; production is config + archive + ordered restart.

I will not re-import old Voltage invoices into live collections for accounting. I will not leave old Voltage stream cursors sitting in live Mongo (that would skip almost everything on Legion). I will not label the new node voltage in config while pointing at Legion — that would blend two nodes under one ledger sub and make forensics miserable later.

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After the cutover

• Watch logs hard for the first hour: wrong subscribe point, permission errors, unique-index noise.
• Confirm Voltage is no longer getting new v4vapp business traffic.
• Then reopen deposit paths properly and keep an eye on balances.

If something looks wrong after I reopen, comment here — same as always.

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Support

Moving nodes is the unglamorous half of running a bridge. Hosting and time still cost real money; fees do not cover close to it. If this service is useful to you:

• Vote for the witness
• Upvotes / tips / Lightning if you are so inclined

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Status updates

I will edit this post (or drop a short follow-up) when:

1. Downtime starts
2. Smoke tests pass and the gateway is open again on Legion

Tomorrow: prep and go-live work. Saturday 1 August: expect downtime.

No drama — just moving the pipes under a live system with other people’s sats in the ledger. I would rather take a clear maintenance window than a silent mess.

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Value for Value

For the last few months while building @v4vapp I was generously supported by the DHF. Going forward I have a much more modest support which covers direct server costs and a little of my time.

If you appreciate the work I do on and around Hive, you can express this directly: upvoting posts on Hive is great. Also consider a direct donation (there's a Tip button on Hive or a Lightning Address) on all my posts.

Vote for Brianoflondon's Witness KeyChain or HiveSigner

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