00-introduction.md

Introduction

This workshop will create a simple commandline application in Rust, using the Breez SDK. In the next exercises, you will walk through the core functionality of the SDK, and if there's time, implement some cool features.

Setup

Clone this repository onto your local machine and move into the repo directory.

git clone https://github.com/JssDWt/breez_sdk_3hour_workshop
cd breez_sdk_3hour_workshop

Copy .env.example to .env

cp .env.example .env

In the .env file, fill in your Greenlight invite code and Breez API key into the GREENLIGHT_INVITE_CODE and BREEZ_API_KEY variables respectively.

Compile the main branch. This should give no errors. There will be a warning, but that's fine.

cargo build

Mnemonic

With Breez SDK, every user has their own personal lightning node in the cloud, hosted by the Blockstream Greenlight infrastructure. The user holds their own keys, they never leave the user's device. The code to generate a mnemonic for the user is already available in the starter code.

Run the mnemonic command to generate a mnemonic of your own. Put the resulting mnemonic in the MNEMONIC variable in the .env file.

Note: The -- is there to separate the parameters for

cargo run -- mnemonic

If someone else has this mnemonic, they can access your funds on your lightning node. Normally it's a good idea to persist the mnemonic in secure storage. Here, for this example, the mnemonic is simply put in an environment variable.

Documentation / solutions

The Breez SDK methods are documented here.

You can find 'a' solution for every exercise in the solution branch. Every exercise has a commit in the solution branch, so you can look at the diff to see how to solve the exercise you're working on.

Or checkout the solution branch to see full solutions for all exercises at once.

git checkout solution

Done?

Go to the next exercise.