{
    "meta": {
        "title": "Lightning BOLTs Reference",
        "description": "Machine-readable index of the 11 Lightning Network BOLTs (Basis of Lightning Technology): number, title and what each spec covers, from the canonical lightning/bolts repository.",
        "generated": "2026-06-20T03:38:15+00:00",
        "version": "1.0",
        "license": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/",
        "license_name": "CC BY 4.0",
        "source": "https://d-central.tech/lightning-bolts-reference/",
        "record_count": 11,
        "disclaimer": "Condensed from the canonical lightning/bolts repository (June 2026). BOLT #6 was merged/removed. Always verify against the repo."
    },
    "rows": [
        {
            "number": 1,
            "bolt": "BOLT 1",
            "title": "Base Protocol",
            "description": "Message framing, the type-length-value (TLV) format, and the connection lifecycle between Lightning peers."
        },
        {
            "number": 2,
            "bolt": "BOLT 2",
            "title": "Peer Protocol for Channel Management",
            "description": "Opening, updating (adding/settling HTLCs) and closing a payment channel between two nodes."
        },
        {
            "number": 3,
            "bolt": "BOLT 3",
            "title": "Bitcoin Transaction and Script Formats",
            "description": "The commitment and HTLC transactions and scripts that back a channel on the Bitcoin blockchain."
        },
        {
            "number": 4,
            "bolt": "BOLT 4",
            "title": "Onion Routing Protocol",
            "description": "Sphinx onion encryption that hides the full payment route from intermediate routing nodes."
        },
        {
            "number": 5,
            "bolt": "BOLT 5",
            "title": "Recommendations for On-chain Transaction Handling",
            "description": "How a node should react when a channel goes on-chain — cooperative vs force close, and sweeping outputs."
        },
        {
            "number": 7,
            "bolt": "BOLT 7",
            "title": "P2P Node and Channel Discovery",
            "description": "The gossip protocol that propagates node and channel announcements to build the routing graph."
        },
        {
            "number": 8,
            "bolt": "BOLT 8",
            "title": "Encrypted and Authenticated Transport",
            "description": "The Noise_XK handshake that encrypts and authenticates every peer-to-peer connection."
        },
        {
            "number": 9,
            "bolt": "BOLT 9",
            "title": "Assigned Feature Flags",
            "description": "The registry of feature bits nodes advertise to negotiate optional protocol capabilities."
        },
        {
            "number": 10,
            "bolt": "BOLT 10",
            "title": "DNS Bootstrap and Assisted Node Location",
            "description": "Finding initial peers to connect to via DNS seed records."
        },
        {
            "number": 11,
            "bolt": "BOLT 11",
            "title": "Invoice Protocol for Lightning Payments",
            "description": "The bech32 'lnbc...' payment request (the BOLT 11 invoice) that encodes amount, payment hash and routing hints."
        },
        {
            "number": 12,
            "bolt": "BOLT 12",
            "title": "Negotiation Protocol for Lightning Payments",
            "description": "Offers — reusable, static payment offers and the invoice-request flow that supersedes single-use BOLT 11 invoices."
        }
    ]
}