Funds on my node are missing after node being offline for a month

Bitcoin and Lightning
1

Hello Everyone!

Hope you can help me…

My SSD died one month ago, so I bought a new one and decided to start with a fresh RPI as well. It’s been syncing for five weeks and it has now finished.
When inputing my 24 secret words into the Lightning Node app, I see my funds (both on-chain and LN) are down to zero. I could expect that from my LN wallet due to closing channels… However, the on-chain wallet is zero too!

I’ve verified the 24 words and everything looks good. In fact, I can even see a backup file of my channels within the “Recover channels” option, with the right date and time. So, that confirms me that I input the words right.

hat can I do…? Any help would be appreciated!

Thanks in advance!

2

I had a thought of alt wallet address for BTC but I dont remember how that works. This sucks. I wonder what it shows for channels on 1ml.com for your node. Are there open channels there?

3

Thanks for your answer @stinger32!
Honestly, I am not really worried about the channels, as the ones I had they now show as “Closing”. I guess, it is just a matter of time until those funds are back…
My main concern is on the on-chain funds I had. They are not displayed.

Just thinking: might it be because the Electrs app is giving me some hard time syncing?
It actually gets stuck in “Connecting to Electrs server”. It has been like this since the Bitcoin Core finalised its syncing. I’ve tried to restart but nothing…

Also, I get the following log:

tor_server-1         | May 09 18:16:36.000 [notice] Bootstrapped 30% (loading_status): Loading networkstatus consensus
tor_server-1         | May 09 18:16:39.000 [notice] I learned some more directory information, but not enough to build a circuit: We have no usable consensus.
4

Your Bitcoin wallet of Lightning node should show your transaction history. While you are waiting for Electrs fully synced, you can check your bitcoin addresses on another blockchain explorer. This can leak your privacy, though.

5

Thanks for your reply, @lost_knight.

The transaction history within the on-chain wallet of my LN is literally empty. All old transactions are gone from the history.

The channels that I had open are now closed, so those funds got back to me. However, nothing yet from my previous on-chain funds.

Also, Electrs was fully synced but when finished, it threw an error and it is now syncing again:

electrs_electrs_1    | Starting electrs 0.10.9 on aarch64 linux with Config { network: Bitcoin, db_path: "/data/db/bitcoin", db_log_dir: None, db_parallelism: 1, daemon_auth: CookieFile("/data/.bitcoin/.cookie"), daemon_rpc_addr: 10.21.21.8:8332, daemon_p2p_addr: 10.21.21.8:8333, electrum_rpc_addr: 0.0.0.0:50001, monitoring_addr: 127.0.0.1:4224, wait_duration: 10s, jsonrpc_timeout: 15s, index_batch_size: 10, index_lookup_limit: None, reindex_last_blocks: 0, auto_reindex: true, ignore_mempool: false, sync_once: false, skip_block_download_wait: false, disable_electrum_rpc: false, server_banner: "Umbrel Electrs (0.10.9)", signet_magic: f9beb4d9 }
electrs_electrs_1    | [2025-05-11T11:12:49.718Z INFO  electrs::metrics::metrics_impl] serving Prometheus metrics on 127.0.0.1:4224
electrs_electrs_1    | [2025-05-11T11:12:49.718Z INFO  electrs::server] serving Electrum RPC on 0.0.0.0:50001
electrs_electrs_1    | [2025-05-11T11:12:55.236Z INFO  electrs::db] "/data/db/bitcoin": 924 SST files, 78.804478525 GB, 6.57059589 Grows
electrs_electrs_1    | [2025-05-11T11:13:25.416Z INFO  electrs::db] closing DB at /data/db/bitcoin
electrs_electrs_1    | Error: electrs failed
electrs_electrs_1    | 
electrs_electrs_1    | Caused by:
electrs_electrs_1    |     0: bitcoind RPC polling failed
electrs_electrs_1    |     1: daemon not available
electrs_electrs_1    |     2: JSON-RPC error: transport error: Couldn't connect to host: Resource temporarily unavailable (os error 11)

Would you know why the error and if it might happen again…? Thanks!

6

I’m not a developer nor coder in any way, but I have had this situation happen to me 2x. The first time I gave up looking for the funds after 3 or 4 days. I went back about 2 months later and the funds were there. The second time it took a while also, but I didn’t check often as the channels were small. When there is a forced close on a channel (like when someone goes offline for a few weeks…) The funds are there, it just takes a while for the funds to show because of the wait time settings on the channel.

Try this…Go to 1ml.com and look for your channel name. There, it should show the channel numbers of the channel partners you had. Copy then paste those numbers on mempool.com. This should give you a view of the channel funding transaction. You should be able to see where the funds are. If this is unclear please let me know. I will try to explain in more detail.

7

I apologize. the site is
mempool.space not mempool.com

8

I am no technical enough to understand your electrs errors. Normally, I used a simple solution of deleting and reinstalling Electrs when it did not work. When I reinstalled Electrs, I needed to wait for it to finish the sync about 24 hours.

This is very weird that your on-chain bitcoin wallet does not show any bitcoin transaction history. It must be there on the chain.

9

After thinking about this a little more, then coming back to read the other comments. I see that you also had onchain funds that are not showing. I read somewhere and I will try to find it. After you set up a new node it has to search the blockchain for the previous transactions. This may take a long time. (But everything that happens around here takes a while. There was no exact time, but the post did say that if you restart the node this might inactivate the “reindex” of the blockchain and your funds may not appear in your wallet. Reindex might not be the correct word.

10

This might be the answer. Please let us know if this works for you.

11

This might be the cause of Electrs not synching.

12

Thanks for your answers, @18650engineer, and @lost_knight ! All good with the channels. They all closed after resetting the node and recovering the channels and now funds are back on-chain.

Regarding the on-chain funds, that’s quite right. Everything takes time in here. But we people panic in the meantime! This morning I deleted Electrs and restarted the node. Let’s see. It is syncing since then. I will let you know guys what the outcome is.
I will have a look at the suggested solutions meanwhile.

Thanks a lot!

13

That is great to hear that everything is starting to reappear. It’s really difficult to know that sometimes things take days or weeks to complete because there is no customer service to walk us through the process. Especially when we are dealing with money. Well, (our money) Bitcoin.

If you haven’t heard it yet. NEVER NEVER NEVER unplug the node without a proper shut down. If you have to, or If you are unsure…wait a long long time (maybe half an hour) to unplug if you aren’t sure which state it is in. Otherwise It WILL fry the ssd. My first node took a dive because it was booting or shutting down and I didn’t wait long enough. That fried the ssd, but I thought that I waited long enough. I’m learning patience.