Boltz Suspends Bitcoin Swap Services, Citing AI-Assisted Attack Wave

Non-custodial Bitcoin swap service Boltz announced on August 4, 2024 that it was suspending its swap operations, citing an ongoing increase in “automated AI-assisted probing” against its infrastructure over recent months. According to a statement posted to X, the team had handled multiple exploit attempts over the past few months. Although each was contained, attackers were discovering and adapting to vulnerabilities faster than the small team could investigate and patch them. The company said attack intensity had accelerated sharply in just the last few days, and that it did “not expect this asymmetry to reverse,” making it impossible to responsibly re-enable the service.

Boltz offers non-custodial atomic swaps between the Bitcoin mainchain and Bitcoin layers such as the Lightning Network and Liquid. DefiLlama data shows its total value locked at around $180,000. Boltz stressed that funds were self-custodied by users at all times, meaning no user funds were at risk. The API would remain open to process refunds, and customer support remained reachable. The company cautioned, however, that users should not expect the swap service to resume in the near term.

This wave of attacks is not an isolated case. Michael Coates, the Solana Foundation’s new chief information security officer, told Cointelegraph in July that the industry was reaching a tipping point where “humans cannot scale to handle the threats,” requiring automated defenses that operate at machine speed. PayPerQ, a pay-per-query AI service that accepts bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, also said it had been fending off suspected AI-launched exploit attempts every other week for months.