Cowrie Research

ln-bot

3 min read

ln.bot

  • Name: ln.bot
  • URL: https://ln.bot/
  • Category: agent-oriented Lightning wallet infrastructure / MCP-and-REST wallet control plane / L402 payments middleware
  • Tags: bitcoin-ecosystem
  • Summary: ln.bot is a managed Lightning wallet control plane for software. The useful part is not the MCP gloss; it is the hosted hot-wallet surface: wallet addresses, scoped keys, event streams, and native L402 handling without asking the operator to run a node or manage channels. Read it as programmable Lightning wallet middleware for agents and apps, not as a self-custodial wallet anchor.
  • What it does:
    • Creates managed Lightning wallets with Lightning addresses like name@ln.bot and lets apps or agents send and receive sats without operating node infrastructure
    • Exposes the same wallet surface through CLI, REST API, MCP server, and official SDKs for TypeScript, Python, Go, Rust, and C#
    • Supports sending to Lightning addresses, LNURLs, and BOLT11 invoices, plus receiving through created invoices or address-based invoice generation endpoints
    • Offers scoped user keys and single-wallet keys, with rotation and revocation flows, plus idempotent payment requests for safe retries
    • Streams wallet events over SSE and supports webhook callbacks for invoice and payment updates
    • Implements native L402 flows so developers can create payment challenges, pay 402 Payment Required responses, and verify authorization tokens
    • Provides recovery primitives including one-time recovery-passphrase and passkey flows while still framing the service as operational hot-wallet infrastructure, not cold storage
  • Key claims:
    • The homepage says ln.bot is a “Lightning wallet built for machines — not humans clicking buttons,” with built-in MCP discovery, no node, and no channels to manage
    • The main docs page says any application or AI agent can get a wallet through CLI, REST, MCP, or SDKs and explicitly frames the product as “no node to run, no channels to manage, no protocol internals”
    • The AI-agent guide says one MCP connection or SDK import lets an agent receive payments, pay other agents, and auto-pay L402 APIs, with maxPrice and budgetSats controls for spend limits
    • The REST API reference documents two key types (uk_ user keys and wk_ wallet keys), one-time recovery-passphrase return during registration, key rotation and revocation, invoice and payment SSE endpoints, and idempotencyKey support on outbound payments
    • The MCP docs expose wallet, invoice, payment, address, and L402 tools behind a streamable-HTTP MCP server plus a public discovery document at /.well-known/mcp.json
    • The GitHub org profile says the product includes real-time events, webhooks, Lightning addresses, recovery built in, and simple usage-based pricing with no monthly fees
  • Whitepaper: No canonical standalone ln.bot whitepaper or litepaper surfaced in this pass. The clearest current sources of truth were the official site, docs corpus, and GitHub org/profile materials; see ../whitepapers/ln-bot-primary-sources-2026-05-03.md.
  • Sources:

Internal linkages

Governance / control risk

  • The leverage sits with the hosted wallet boundary: who holds the hot-wallet state, how key scopes and revocation actually constrain spend, how recovery flows are mediated, and how much the app trusts ln.bot’s webhook, SSE, and L402-auth plumbing.

  • Useful middleware, but still a service-shaped choke point.

  • Last reviewed: 2026-06-02 UTC

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