What I Built
Built and operated a local Bitcoin Core full node and Lightning Network node to develop a practical, systems-level understanding of Bitcoin settlement and Lightning payment flows — and to see how blockchain explorers and node monitoring tools actually work under the hood.
I'd already built on Ethereum and understood how smart contracts and DeFi protocols work. But Bitcoin is a different system entirely — different architecture, different tradeoffs, different use cases. So I set up my own Bitcoin Core node, synced the full blockchain, and connected a Lightning node on top of it. Then I started building tools to pull data directly from the network: hash rate calculations from block headers, difficulty adjustment tracking, channel balance monitoring, payment flow analysis. The kind of stuff that blockchain explorers and node dashboards are built on.
What I Learned
- •Bitcoin's base layer is slow and expensive by design — that's the security tradeoff. Understanding this at the protocol level clarified why Layer 2 solutions exist and what problems they actually solve.
- •Lightning introduces real operational complexity: channels need liquidity, routing isn't guaranteed, and there's ongoing overhead to keep nodes functional. This is often glossed over in product pitches.
- •Running infrastructure made concepts concrete. Seeing how the layers connect — base layer settlement vs. payment channels — gave me intuition that reading alone never provided.
- •The tooling ecosystem (explorers, dashboards, monitoring) is built on the same primitives I was pulling directly from nodes. Understanding the raw data layer helps me evaluate what these tools actually show.
Why Does This Matter?
When a payment company says they're building on Lightning, I understand what that means operationally. When an exchange talks about on-chain settlement versus Layer 2, I know what tradeoffs they're navigating. The Ethereum work taught me how programmable money works. This taught me how Bitcoin's payment rails work. Together, they give me context across both ecosystems.