LND node channels disappeared

[levent]

Dear all,

I recently opened 3 channels with 3 different nodes on the lightning terminal for my LND-node. Now i can’t see them anymore in Lightning terminal. I don’t have a backup from after i opened these three channels.

I thought maybe the channels were force closed, but the channel balances did not return to my onchain wallet. I used AutOpen functionality within Lightning Terminal to open the channels and had to transfer 10M satoshi to be able to make use of this functionality.

Before i try to recover these funds from the channels with chantools (or similar), if at all possible. I had another question: My node is visible/searchable within the lightning terminal Web userinterface. But if i go to https://mempool.space and enter my public node id, mempool does not find my LND node. I checked my 3 peers and they work fine as they do show up in mempool.space. I checked their active channels and none had channels (anymore) with me. It seems my node is not online.

Everything seems fine from the start9 perspective. Both LND and lightning terminal services pass all healthchecks.

Somebody has some tips what to do or where to look?

Background:
I did stop and start LND and lightning terminal services from the start9 installed services tab, but i am not sure if this was prior to opening the channels or afterwards. Is it possible that stopping and starting LND has negative consequences to the active lighting channels?

[Alvaro]

The first thing you could do to double check everything is use a third option like Ride the Lightning in order to look into the channels.

Channels don´t just disappear out of nowhere and if for some reason they were force closed, you will be able to see them in RTL as “Pending Force Close”.

You should keep in mind that if they were indeed force closed, you will not see the balance back in the LND On-Chain wallet until after some time. Usually this can could take up to two weeks or more depending on the time lock configuration the channel had when it was opened in the first place.

[levent]

Hi Alvaro,
I checked with Ride the Lightning and can’t see the channels, also not as ‘Pending force close’ (see screenschot1). I see that i have 5 peers, 3 of these peers (PatBoy, EverNukenNode and Deenmo) are the nodes that i had channels with (see screenshot2).

Could it be that after stopping and starting my LND-node from the start9 server the ip-address of my node changed (like static versus dynamic ip address) and that this influenced my channels?

I

screenshot1

screenshot2:

[Alvaro]

Are you running the latest LND 0.19.3 version?

[levent]

Hi Alvaro,

I am running LND v0.9.2-beta.

Little update:

I don’t know how, but now my Node does pup up on https://mempool.space including my 3 channels. But still i don’t see these channels in lightning terminal or Ride the Lightning.

Here are the screenshots:

and the bottom part of the same webpage

[Alvaro]

Go ahead and update to the latest version of LND in the Marketplace 0.19.3.

Beta versions are only recommended for testing, not for normal use.

[levent]

I updated LND to 0.19.3 from the marketplace. The version shows as 0.19.3-beta in Lightning Terminals as RTL.

But my 3 channels are still not there.
I restarted bitcoind and LND, but again no channels. I went trough the lnd.log file and saw these messages that may be of interest. For the 3 nodes i had channels with the log messages were all the same. I paste the log messages of one peer (EverNukeNode):

2025-09-12T10:06:17+02:00  2025-09-12 08:06:17.912 [INF] SRVR: New inbound connection from 172.18.0.1:60842
2025-09-12T10:06:17+02:00  2025-09-12 08:06:17.912 [INF] SRVR: Finalizing connection to 03bcadbf6d18681c99d6cae4364456196a0adcacc77aede921e6e40a38b12b69be@172.18.0.1:60842, inbound=true
2025-09-12T10:06:17+02:00  2025-09-12 08:06:17.925 [INF] MSGX: Starting Router
2025-09-12T10:06:17+02:00  2025-09-12 08:06:17.925 [INF] PEER: Peer(03bcadbf6d18681c99d6cae4364456196a0adcacc77aede921e6e40a38b12b69be): Negotiated chan series queries
2025-09-12T10:06:17+02:00  2025-09-12 08:06:17.925 [INF] DISC: Creating new GossipSyncer for peer=03bcadbf6d18681c99d6cae4364456196a0adcacc77aede921e6e40a38b12b69be
2025-09-12T10:06:18+02:00  2025-09-12 08:06:18.550 [ERR] PEER: Peer(03bcadbf6d18681c99d6cae4364456196a0adcacc77aede921e6e40a38b12b69be): resend failed: unable to fetch channel sync messages for peer 03bcadbf6d18681c99d6cae4364456196a0adcacc77aede921e6e40a38b12b69be@172.18.0.1:60842: unable to find closed channel summary

The last line says something about unable to find closed channel summary. Don’t know if this is of importance?

[Jeremy]

Hi @levent,

Quick question to clarify: did you restore a backup of your node before opening these 3 channels?

If so, that would explain why they appear on mempool.space but not in your LND apps – opening new channels after a restore can cause the local database to lose track of them. The usual recovery path is to have your peers force close the channels so your funds return on-chain after the timelock, or otherwise use a tool like chantools to sweep them.

If you didn’t restore a backup, we can dig further by running some lncli commands over SSH to confirm the state of your node.

[levent]

Hi Jeremy,
That is correct. I did a restore from backup.

I did this on purpose to test if everything would be recoverable. i had one open channel before backup, then performed the backup, deleted my node and finally did a restore. After restore, this one channel did not come back, but the channelfunds came back to my onchain wallet (i believe it was remote force closed by my peer).

Great to hear that there are possibilities to recover the funds. This is going to be a noob question, but how do i reach my peers?
Or do you have a link to how to sweep funds with chantool?

[StuPleb]

Are you confirming that after restoring from backup and nuking your original channel, you decided to open channels using the same restored LND instance?

After a restore of LND it is not recommended to continue using the same instance. You are explicitly warned against this when you do the restore. If you ignore the warning and do this anyway, you risk losing your funds.

The best way to contact your peers might be by email, or maybe by social media. Depends who they are. If they are fairly public people or entities, they may have contact details on places like Amboss.space

How to do about using chantools on StartOS depends on your CPU architecture. You don’t mention what this is so assuming x86…

x86_64

sudo curl -L https://github.com/lightninglabs/chantools/releases/download/v0.13.7/chantools-linux-amd64-v0.13.7.tar.gz | sudo tar -zxv -f- --strip-components=1 -C /usr/local/bin

From here on, anyone who helps you with any of the following steps has ample opportunity to steal all your funds. You should avoid posting anything regarding the output of any of these commands.

Once chantools has been installed carefully follow the below steps. Do NOT share any of the info from the below commands with anyone.

Step 1: Generate a LND address to sweep the funds to using

sudo podman exec -it lnd.embassy lncli --rpcserver lnd.embassy newaddress p2wkh

Then exit the container.

Step 2: Retrieve the pwd.dat used to unlock wallet.db using

cat /embassy-data/package-data/volumes/lnd/data/main/pwd.dat

Stop LND as the chantools command below will require LND be stopped.

Step 3: Retrieve the xprv of the wallet using

sudo chantools walletinfo --walletdb /embassy-data/package-data/volumes/lnd/data/main/data/chain/bitcoin/mainnet/wallet.db --withrootkey 

You will be prompted for the wallet password; copy and paste the output from the command in step 2 above. If this command is successful, you will see a “BIP32 HD extended root key” - you will need the value beginning with “xprv…”

Finally you can construct the chantools command to scan for addresses with funds and sweep to the address created in step 1.

Be sure to replace with your root key derived in step 3 above, and with your address derived in step 1 above.

chantools sweepremoteclosed --rootkey <xprv> --sweepaddr <bc1>

This command may take a few moments or more to run, wait for it to complete. Once the command does complete, you should see an output indicating a sweep target was found.

Now publish it

chantools sweepremoteclosed --rootkey <xprv> --sweepaddr <bc1> --publish

Afterwards you can start LND and wait for the sweep tx to confirm.

[levent]

Hai StuPleb,
I confirm that i used the same restored LND instance.
Thank you for the instructions. I’ll be working on it…

[levent]

Hi StuPleb,
I managed to reach out to one of my channel peers (Deenmo) and he force closed one of the channels. I can see it in mempool.space, but RTL shows nothing in my onchain LND wallet.
So my question is:
Why did the funds not return to my onchain wallet?
Here is the screenshot from RTL with my already existing balance of 163674 satoshi. But the channelfunds of 0.03069836 BTC are not there (yet?).

And here the screenshot of the force closure:

Maybe there is a timelock or something, or could it be because of the opening transaction being part of a batch opening. I used the AutoOpen function from lightning terminal to open channels. And it opened two channels at the same time. Is it possible that the onchain funds only return after the other channel in the batch opening is also closed?

[Alvaro]

Keep in mind that when a Lightning channel is force closed, it can take some time for it to appear in your LND on-chain wallet, this is totally normal.

How much time will depend on the time lock that was initially set. But now all you should have to do is have patience and the funds will eventually show up.