Opening channels

First you need to transfer some funds to lightningd so that it can open a channel:

# Returns an address <address>
lightning-cli newaddr

lightningd will register the funds once the transaction is confirmed.

Alternatively you can generate a taproot address should your source of funds support it:

# Return a taproot address
lightning-cli newaddr p2tr

Confirm lightningd got funds by:

# Returns an array of on-chain funds.
lightning-cli listfunds

Once lightningd has funds, we can connect to a node and open a channel. Let's assume the remote node is accepting connections at <ip> (and optional <port>, if not 9735) and has the node ID <node_id>:

lightning-cli connect <node_id> <ip> [<port>]
lightning-cli fundchannel <node_id> <amount_in_satoshis>

This opens a connection and, on top of that connection, then opens a channel.

The funding transaction needs 3 confirmations in order for the channel to be usable, and 6 to be announced for others to use.

You can check the status of the channel using lightning-cli listpeers, which after 3 confirmations (1 on testnet) should say that state is CHANNELD_NORMAL; after 6 confirmations you can use lightning-cli listchannels to verify that the public field is now true.