Boltz, the most dominant Bitcoin atomic swap and bridge protocol, has suspended its swap services indefinitely, citing a wave of sophisticated AI-assisted exploits.
The halt began at 5.54 a.m ET, with the Lightning and Liquid swap rails cut off from wallets such as Aqua and Bitcoin Bull. In a statement issued about six hours later, the Boltz team explained:
“Over the past months we have seen a steady rise in automated, AI-assisted probing of our infrastructure, and we have dealt with several exploits. Each was contained, but the pattern is clear: attackers now iterate faster than a team our size can find and patch.”
In addition, the team noted that the attacks appeared to originate from “resourceful groups,” and that it could not “responsibly re-enable Boltz swaps.”
According to Boltz, users’ Bitcoin remains secure due to its non-custodial design, and operational costs were absorbed internally. Currently, the protocol’s API remains online, conducting refunds of incoming swaps.
On August 1, Bolts halted its Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) swaps, citing an EVM integration bug. The latest attack focused away from EVM and onto the Bitcoin ecosystem.
Similar attacks took place recently: the Metronome synthetic asset shortfall of July 31, where an embedded oracle delay led to the loss of about $16 million. Another was the August 1 Adform script poisoning, which interfered with the wallet address copy-paste feature.
A most prominent attack is the recent Coldcard firmware vulnerability that has so far drained $116 million in Bitcoin.
Of the Boltz attacks, Lucas Ferreira of the Bitcoin non-profit Vinteum noted:
“Boltz has a brilliant team, but it’s a small team facing increasingly sophisticated, AI-powered groups of hackers.”
Francis Pouliot, CEO of Bull Bitcoin, said the company was working to restore the impaired swap capabilities. Samson Mow, CEO of JAN3, the firm behind the Aqua wallet, said its team was working with Boltz to restore functionality to optimal levels. Meanwhile, Lightning wallet ZEUS posted that it would be offline due to Boltz downtime.
CoinPedia has been delivering accurate and timely cryptocurrency and blockchain updates since 2017. All content is created by our expert panel of analysts and journalists, following strict Editorial Guidelines based on E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness). Every article is fact-checked against reputable sources to ensure accuracy, transparency, and reliability. Our review policy guarantees unbiased evaluations when recommending exchanges, platforms, or tools. We strive to provide timely updates about everything crypto & blockchain, right from startups to industry majors.
All opinions and insights shared represent the author's own views on current market conditions. Please do your own research before making investment decisions. Neither the writer nor the publication assumes responsibility for your financial choices.
Sponsored content and affiliate links may appear on our site. Advertisements are marked clearly, and our editorial content remains entirely independent from our ad partners.
BlackRock, the world’s largest asset management corporation ($15.34 trillion in assets under management or AUM…
Macro expert Dr. Jim Willie laid out a sweeping, speculative theory connecting XRP to global…
BlackRock has filed with the SEC to issue tokenized fund shares on Solana, marking one…
AAVE price is drawing renewed attention as the protocol's fundamentals continue strengthening despite broader market…
Bitcoin is once again telling two completely different stories. While retail holders appear to be…
XRP price is sitting just above the crucial $1.00 support level, but the chart still…
