Connecting to your own Bitcoin node

Bisq will connect to your local Bitcoin node if it finds it upon starting up. This article contains the requirements for this to work correctly.

You can also specify the addresses of particular Bitcoin nodes in Settings > Network Info.

General node settings

The bitcoin.conf file needs to contain the following settings (either by adding them or editing the existing ones):

server=1
pruned=0
peerbloomfilters=1

which in turn:

• enable the block server mode
• disable the pruning of old blocks
• allow Bisq to run its SPV wallet

Connecting to a local Bitcoin node

If you're running a Bitcoin full node on the same machine as Bisq, Bisq should connect to your node on startup—it will look for Bitcoin Core or bitcoind running on localhost on port 8333.

Just make sure to not be running any other Bitcoin-based altcoin nodes (like LTC) while starting Bisq.

Connecting to another Bitcoin node

By default, Bisq maximizes your privacy by connecting to nodes run by trusted Bisq contributors.

If you'd like to connect to another node, you can specify its address in Settings > Network Info. Bisq will validate the address and connect to the specified node the next time it starts.

Bisq v1.7.4 and later releases support connecting to Bitcoin nodes with Tor v3 addresses.

Troubleshooting

If you get into a state where Bisq is unable to connect, you can revert to a provided node as follows.

For MacOS:

Bisq -btcNodes=emzybtc3ewh7zihpkdvuwlgxrhzcxy2p5fvjggp7ngjbxcytxvt4rjid.onion:8333 -useTorForBtc=true 

For Linux:

cd /opt/bisq/bin

./Bisq -btcNodes=emzybtc3ewh7zihpkdvuwlgxrhzcxy2p5fvjggp7ngjbxcytxvt4rjid.onion:8333 -useTorForBtc=true

Contributor nodes can be seen here in the Bisq code.

More info on running from the command line.

More info on command line options.