vortex-ng

JoinMarket's coinjoin protocol, over Nostr only, with Lightning channel opens, in Rust.

vortex-ng is the successor to LnVortex (archived 2022), rebuilt around JoinMarket's maker/taker market instead of a central coordinator:

• JoinMarket semantics, Nostr transport. The protocol layer (commands, NaCl sessions, PoDLE, fidelity bonds, per-pit transaction rules, maker and taker checks) follows JMP-0001 and the JMP extensions exactly. Only the message channel changes: Nostr relays instead of IRC or onion directories. No coordinator.
• Three pits. sw0 (P2WPKH, JMP-0001), tr0 (taproot, JMP-0010), and wsh0 (P2WSH 2-of-2, shaped exactly like a Lightning funding output; draft in this repo).
• Lightning channel opens inside the coinjoin. A taker's equal-amount output can be the funding output of a taproot channel (in tr0) or a regular channel (in wsh0); makers see an ordinary output of the pit's type. LND, Core Lightning and LDK can open; any implementation can be the peer.
• Upstreamable by construction. Every protocol piece JoinMarket lacks is written as a JMP draft (docs/jmp/) for joinmarket-ng to adopt.

Status: milestone M0 (bootstrap and specifications). Nothing here moves coins yet. Do not use it on mainnet.

Documents

docs/decisions/	Architecture decision records
docs/jmp/jmp-draft-nostr-message-channel.md	JoinMarket over Nostr: offers, public and private messages, relays, Tor
docs/jmp/jmp-draft-wsh0-pit.md	The wsh0 pit for regular Lightning channel opens
docs/jmp/jmp-draft-channel-funding-outputs.md	A taker's coinjoin output as a Lightning funding output
docs/upstream-pins.md	The JoinMarket revisions vortex-ng is compatible with

Crates

crate	role
vortex-ng-core	Protocol logic with no I/O: codec, nicks, offers, PoDLE, bonds, per-pit rules
vortex-ng-nostr	The Nostr message channel
vortex-ng-wallet	JoinMarket-compatible wallet (mixdepths per pit, fidelity bonds)
vortex-ng-chain	Chain backend over Core-compatible JSON-RPC (Bitcoin Core or rbitcoin)
vortex-ng-ln	Lightning channel funding (LND, Core Lightning, LDK)
vortex-ng-maker, vortex-ng-taker	The two roles
vortex-ngd, vortex-ng-cli (binary vortex-ng)	Daemon and command line

Roadmap

M0 bootstrap + specs · M1 core (all pits, PoDLE, bonds, codec, test vectors) · M2 sw0 over Nostr, interop with joinmarket-ng · M3 tr0 · M4 Lightning backends, wsh0, channel-funding outputs · M5 tumbler, channel rings (JMP-0014), credential market (JMP-0012/13) · M6 external funding for Eclair and ldk-node upstream.

Building

Rust 1.98 (pinned in rust-toolchain.toml). cargo test --workspace.

Acknowledgements

vortex-ng exists because of the work it builds on:

• Ben Carman (benthecarman) and the LnVortex contributors, for showing that a coinjoin output can be a Lightning channel's funding output, and for the protocol and code that made the idea concrete.
• JoinMarket-NG and its contributors, for a clean, well-documented implementation of the JoinMarket protocol, the JMP specifications, and the taproot pit and channel-ring designs that vortex-ng follows; and the original JoinMarket project they build on.

Thank you.

License

Licensed under either of Apache License, Version 2.0 or MIT license at your option. Unless you explicitly state otherwise, any contribution intentionally submitted for inclusion in this work, as defined in the Apache-2.0 license, shall be dual licensed as above, without any additional terms or conditions.