The Lightning Specification, also known as the Basis of Lightning Technology (BOLT), is a collection of the Bitcoin community’s efforts to specify and consolidate the technical standards around the Lightning Network, intending to reach feature compatibility and interoperability across implementations. At the time of writing, there are twelve BOLTs, numbered #0 through #12 with number 6 retired. BOLT12 was merged into the specification in September 2024, the first new BOLT added since 2017, and BOLT12 offers ship enabled by default in Core Lightning as of v24.11 (December 2024). Recurring invoices and blinded payment paths remain experimental.
Complete list of current BOLTs:
- BOLT #1: Base Protocol
- BOLT #2: Peer Protocol for Channel Management
- BOLT #3: Bitcoin Transaction and Script Formats
- BOLT #4: Onion Routing Protocol
- BOLT #5: Recommendations for On-chain Transaction Handling
- BOLT #7: P2P Node and Channel Discovery
- BOLT #8: Encrypted and Authenticated Transport
- BOLT #9: Assigned Feature Flags
- BOLT #10: DNS Bootstrap and Assisted Node Location
- BOLT #11: Invoice Protocol for Lightning Payments
- BOLT #12: Offer Encoding for Lightning Payments
The BOLT12 specification on GitHub.
For more information about the Lightning Specification, please watch the visual explanation provided below.