Citadel allows you to run your own Bitcoin Lightning node and personal server. It is proudly free and open-source software. Anyone is free to use, copy, study and change the software in any way as well as distribute it for commercial purposes.
We aim to provide secure nodes and servers for everyone where you are in control of your data, not a big company. We make contributions to various open source projects used on Citadel to make sure we're giving back to the community we build on.
💡 Have an idea for a feature? Discuss a topic
⁉ Something isn't working? Create an issue
📚 Find guides & best practices: Wiki
There are many ways to install Citadel. Depending on your hardware and operating system you can follow one of the below step-by-step guides to get started.
Raspberry Pi 4: runcitadel.space/setup
Debian / Ubuntu: runcitadel.space/x86
Migrate from Umbrel: runcitadel.space/migrate
Docker + Sysbox (experimental): github.com/runcitadel/citadel-dev
Citadel is a mostly open source and soon to be fully FLOSS Lightning Node implementation based on Umbrel. Most of the codebase has been rewritten and moved away from Umbrel. Citadel offers many improvements over Umbrel:
- faster operating system optimized for Raspberry Pi
- independent and therefore faster app updates
- our own, up-to-date user interface with built-in dark mode
- listening node by default
Citadel is fully transparent and built by the community. To see milestones and follow current development view the project board.
| Name | Description |
|---|---|
| citadel | This overview, issues, discussions and project management |
| core | The core of Citadel |
| dashboard | Current frontend |
| middleware | Communication with bitcoin & lightning implementations |
| manager | Manages containers, authentication & misc. |
| sdk | Library to connect applications to Citadel |
| apps | Free, open source apps available on Citadel |
| citadel-dev | CLI tool to spin up instances of Citadel in a Docker container |
We welcome and appreciate new contributions! The best way to get started is to reach out to us on Telegram.
Citadel is licensed under the GNU Affero General Public License v3.0 or later.
It includes code from umbrel-os and pi-gen, which are
Copyright (c) 2015 Raspberry Pi (Trading) Ltd.
Copyright (c) 2020 Umbrel. https://getumbrel.com/
Additionally, the current dashboard contains code from Casa and Umbrel.
"Being open source means anyone can independently review the code. If it was closed source, nobody could verify the security. I think it's essential for a program of this nature to be open source." — Satoshi Nakamoto
