1 year ago
Antoine Riard believes the Bitcoin assemblage faces a "hard dilemma" arsenic a caller people of replacement cycling attacks threatens the Lightning Network.
Security researcher and developer Antoine Riard is stepping down from the Lightning Network’s development, citing information issues and cardinal challenges to the Bitcoin ecosystem.
According to a thread connected the Linux Foundation’s nationalist mailing list, Riard believes the Bitcoin assemblage faces a "hard dilemma" arsenic a caller people of replacement cycling attacks puts Lightning successful a "perilous position."
How does a lightning replacement cycling onslaught work?
There's a batch of treatment astir this recently discovered vulnerability connected the mailing lists, but the existent mechanics is simply a spot hard to follow.
So here's an illustrated primer...
The Lightning Network is the second-layer solution built implicit the Bitcoin blockchain. It is designed to amended the scalability and ratio of Bitcoin transactions by enabling off-chain, peer-to-peer transactions.
Through the Lightning Network, users tin unfastened outgo channels, behaviour aggregate transactions off-chain, and settee the last effect connected the Bitcoin blockchain. The replacement cycling onslaught targets these outgo channels. It is simply a caller benignant of onslaught that allows the attacker to bargain funds from a transmission subordinate by exploiting inconsistencies betwixt idiosyncratic mempools. According to Riard:
"I deliberation this caller people of replacement cycling attacks puts lightning successful a precise perilous position, wherever lone a sustainable hole tin hap astatine the base-layer, e.g adding a memory-intensive past of all-seen transactions oregon immoderate statement upgrade. Deployed mitigations are worthy thing successful look of elemental attacks, though I don't deliberation they're stopping precocious attackers arsenic said successful the archetypal afloat disclosure mail."Riard besides noted that addressing the caller benignant of onslaught whitethorn necessitate changes to the underlying Bitcoin network:
"Those types of changes are the ones necessitating the utmost transparency and buy-in of the assemblage arsenic a whole, arsenic we're altering the full-nodes processing requirements oregon the information architecture of the decentralized bitcoin ecosystem successful its integrality."Lightning developers grapple with challenges, including criticisms surrounding the network’s complexity and the demands placed connected idiosyncratic experience. Since its inception successful 2018, the layer-2 web has gained popularity, with a full worth locked reaching $159.5 cardinal astatine the clip of writing, according to information from DefiLlama. However, this fig is inactive precise humble erstwhile compared to Bitcoin's $587 cardinal marketplace capitalization.
Riard plans to absorption present connected Bitcoin halfway development, but warned astir upcoming challenges for the large cryptocurrency ecosystem:
"On the different manus afloat explaining wherefore specified changes would beryllium warranted for the involvement of lightning and for designing them well, we mightiness request to laic retired successful implicit authorities applicable and captious attacks connected a ~5 355 nationalist BTC ecosystem. Hard dilemma. There mightiness beryllium a acquisition successful presumption of bitcoin protocol deployment [...]"Magazine: Recursive inscriptions — Bitcoin ‘supercomputer’ and BTC DeFi coming soon
English (US) 