We are pleased to announce the launch of Core Lightning v25.02. Named “Onion Packet Filler Accreditation” by contributor Se7enZ and led by release captain Alex Myers, this release is focused on maintenance, building upon v24.11 to further improve the stability and functionality of Core Lightning.
User and Network Highlights
The chanbackup plugin gains some impressive new functionality with this release. Starting in v0.12, static backups allowed recovering funds by initiating a force close with a peer, and with the experimental peerstorage feature introduced in v23.02, this information is backed up by your peer nodes as well for extra resiliency. With this release, the static channel backups gain some key information in the shachain as well as the peer's basepoints – enough information to be able to construct and perform a penalty transaction, should your peer try to cheat with an old state. This closes the last gap in the recovery process, effectively making each peerstorage peer a watchtower for your channels!
Additionally, blacklisted runes can now be restored using the relist command, improving channel management.
The XPAY plugin has seen numerous bug fixes and is now more stable, working seamlessly with the xpay-handle-pay configuration. The lightning-cli now has a cleaner help output, and improvements to setconfig enhance security by using a separate config.setconfig file for runtime changes. There’s also a fix for an issue preventing the collection of funds from force-closed channels leased with the --experimental-dual-fund flag.
Splicing has also been enhanced with stricter checks for better interoperability with Eclair.
Developer Highlights
Developers will find improvements like clnrest now being implemented as a Rust plugin, optimizing performance. The listpeerchannels command now includes two new fields, their_max_htlc_value_in_flight and our_max_htlc_value_in_flight, for better channel limit calculations. Additionally, plugin_stopped and plugin_started notifications have been added for improved real-time monitoring, and fetchinvoice now accommodates a BIP353 DNS payment instruction field for enhanced invoicing flexibility. This field helps with compatibility for the boutique handling of BOLT12 invoices by remote issuing nodes.
Acknowledging Our Contributors:
A special thanks to the main Core Lightning team for their continued hard work: Alex Myers, Rusty Russell, Christian Decker, Peter Neuroth, Shahana Farooqui, and Lisa Neigut.
Since our last release, there have been 242 commits from 21 authors in just 68 days, including contributions from new developers like Nishant Bansal, gudnuf, and Erick λ.
We also want to recognize Se7enZ, who not only named this release but has also been actively contributing to the project, tackling numerous bounties. You can explore the other open CLN bounties here: CLN Bounties.
Finally, as always, we encourage you to try out Core Lightning v25.02. Share your feedback with us on the Build On L2 forum and stay connected with the Core Lightning team on X, Telegram, and Discord.
Thank you for being part of the growing Core Lightning community!