Lightning BOLTs Reference — Every Lightning Network Spec Explained
The Lightning Network BOLTs (Basis of Lightning Technology) indexed: every specification by number, title and a plain-English summary of what it covers. Free CSV/JSON + REST under CC BY 4.0.
Quick answer
A BOLT (Basis of Lightning Technology) is one of the specification documents that define Bitcoin's Lightning Network — the equivalent of Bitcoin's BIPs or Nostr's NIPs, but for Lightning. This reference indexes the 11 active BOLTs with a plain-English summary of each. The ones you meet most: BOLT 11 (the 'lnbc...' invoice format), BOLT 2 (how channels open, update and close), BOLT 4 (onion routing that keeps payments private) and BOLT 12 (Offers, the reusable payment flow).
Lightning is defined by 11 BOLTs (BOLT 6 was merged away). BOLT 11 (invoices) and BOLT 12 (Offers) are what wallets expose; BOLT 2/3 define channels; BOLT 4/7/8 define private routing and the network graph. Always confirm against the lightning/bolts repo.
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| BOLT | Title | What it covers |
|---|---|---|
| BOLT 1 | Base Protocol | Message framing, the type-length-value (TLV) format, and the connection lifecycle between Lightning peers. |
| BOLT 2 | Peer Protocol for Channel Management | Opening, updating (adding/settling HTLCs) and closing a payment channel between two nodes. |
| BOLT 3 | Bitcoin Transaction and Script Formats | The commitment and HTLC transactions and scripts that back a channel on the Bitcoin blockchain. |
| BOLT 4 | Onion Routing Protocol | Sphinx onion encryption that hides the full payment route from intermediate routing nodes. |
| BOLT 5 | Recommendations for On-chain Transaction Handling | How a node should react when a channel goes on-chain — cooperative vs force close, and sweeping outputs. |
| BOLT 7 | P2P Node and Channel Discovery | The gossip protocol that propagates node and channel announcements to build the routing graph. |
| BOLT 8 | Encrypted and Authenticated Transport | The Noise_XK handshake that encrypts and authenticates every peer-to-peer connection. |
| BOLT 9 | Assigned Feature Flags | The registry of feature bits nodes advertise to negotiate optional protocol capabilities. |
| BOLT 10 | DNS Bootstrap and Assisted Node Location | Finding initial peers to connect to via DNS seed records. |
| BOLT 11 | Invoice Protocol for Lightning Payments | The bech32 'lnbc...' payment request (the BOLT 11 invoice) that encodes amount, payment hash and routing hints. |
| BOLT 12 | Negotiation Protocol for Lightning Payments | Offers — reusable, static payment offers and the invoice-request flow that supersedes single-use BOLT 11 invoices. |
Source: the canonical lightning/bolts repository (June 2026). See also D-Central’s Bitcoin BIPs reference and glossary on the Lightning Network, payment channels, HTLCs, BOLT 11 invoices and routing nodes.
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Last reviewed June 19, 2026.