Tools · Bridges & conversion
Loop
Lightning Labs' non-custodial liquidity bridge — Loop Out and Loop In move balance between Lightning and on-chain via submarine swaps.
What it is
Loop is Lightning Labs’ non-custodial liquidity tool for LND nodes. Loop Out moves Lightning balance to on-chain (the canonical way to sweep an operational balance back to L1 cold-storage reserves); Loop In does the reverse. Both use submarine swaps, so they’re atomic and non-custodial. It’s the standard mechanism behind the hot/cold treasury sweep the Stack describes — making it a practical bridge between the payment layer and the settlement layer.
A Border Zone tool: the swap mechanics that move value between layers live at the boundary. See The Border Zone.
When to use it
- Sweeping an agent’s operational Lightning balance back to on-chain reserves (Loop Out).
- Acquiring inbound Lightning liquidity from on-chain funds (Loop In).
- Treasury liquidity management for an LND-based agent stack.
Quick start
Run Loop against an LND node — repo at github.com/lightninglabs/loop, product page at lightning.engineering/loop/. Recent releases can even open Lightning channels directly from static-address deposits (loop openchannel).
Gotchas
- Still beta software (every release is
-beta). - Swaps execute against Lightning Labs’ Loop server — non-custodial (atomic), but you depend on that server’s availability and pricing; it’s not a permissionless market.
- Primarily targets LND node operators; on-chain fees apply to each swap.