Alby hub recovery

This is a simple tool to recover funds from channels in a static channel backup file. It reconnects to the peer nodes and force closes all open channels, then waits for the sweeping transactions to confirm.

Learn more about Alby Hub backups here: https://guides.getalby.com/user-guide/alby-account-and-browser-extension/alby-hub/backups

Quick start (Alby Account)

Before continuing, please contact Alby Support to check if VSS is enabled for your account (Enabled for Alby Cloud users who subscribed to Alby Hub on or after version 1.11.1). If so, you can start a new hub -> advanced -> import recovery phrase and recover your channels without having to force close them.

1. Download the latest release.
2. Download the channel backup file from https://getalby.com/backups/1 to the same directory as the tool.
3. Launch the tool and follow the instructions.
4. Once the recovery process starts, the application will print the wallet balance periodically. It is safe to interrupt the application with Ctrl+C and restart it later.
5. When the recovery process is complete, the application will exit.

Quick start (No Alby Account)

1. Download the latest release.
2. Copy the channel backup file to the same directory as the tool and rename it to channel-backup.json. You can find it in your Alby Hub WORK_DIR/ldk/static_channel_backups. You can find the WORK_DIR for your operating system here.
3. Launch the tool and follow the instructions.
4. Once the recovery process starts, the application will print the wallet balance periodically. It is safe to interrupt the application with Ctrl+C and restart it later.
5. When the recovery process is complete, the application will exit.

Usage

The app can be built from source with:

$ cargo build --release

The resulting binary will be stored in target/release/hub-recovery.

To recover funds from a static channel backup file, rename the file to channel-backup.json and place it in the same directory as the binary. Start recovery by launching the application:

$ ./hub-recovery

Alternatively, the path to the channel backup file can be specified with the -b option:

$ ./hub-recovery -b /path/to/channel_backup.json

The tool will prompt for the seed phrase. It is also possible to specify the seed phrase as a command line argument. However, this is discouraged as the seed phrase will be stored in the shell history.

After the tool is started, it will periodically print wallet balance. As soon as all funds are swept from the channels, the tool will exit. It is safe to interrupt it with Ctrl+C and restart later.

For all available options, run:

$ hub-recovery -h