NoFate on Nostr: #[0]

quoting nevent1q…qw3p

Lightning is a separate layer. While different implementations handle this differently, they all follow the same hierarchy. Bitcoin is the base layer. Lightning runs independently, but needs to connect to Bitcoin to open and close channels. Lightning does this via smart contracts. You do not need to run them on the same server instance. They can be ran on different devices.

There are multiple ways to accomplish this. You can build your own from scratch by installing Bitcoin Core and then choosing a Lightning implementation such as LND, CLN, Eclair, etc. You can also go for a pre-packaged method where no command line skills are needed via Umbrel, Start9, etc.

So, to answer your questions, are they two separate things? Yes. Are they on two separate servers? Commonly, no, but they can be, and in larger implementations should be for redundancy and disaster recovery.