The Rack

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On the lightning network, payments pass through routing nodes called "hops." Each hop adds additional privacy to your payment, but each one also adds more latency and raises the likelihood of a payment failure.

Many lightning wallets focus on ensuring payments are fast and reliable, so they optimize payments to use as few hops as possible, which harms user privacy. This website lets you turn that around by using the excellent lnproxy network to manually add extra hops to your payments. (A proxy is a type of routing node on the lightning network that focuses on user privacy.)

To use the site, take any lightning network invoice, paste it into the form on this page, and click "Add a hop." The website will return a new lightning invoice with one extra hop added to your payment, and routing fees added on top. You can add additional hops to your payment by clicking the button more than once.

For good privacy, 3 extra hops are recommended. You may continue adding hops if more proxies are available, but more than 6 extra hops is not recommended, as payment reliability falls greatly with that many hops.

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