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Bitcoin Core developer Antoine Riard has left the Lightning Network (LN) team, citing a critical network vulnerability.
According to him, the discovered new class of cyclic spoofing attacks puts the protocol in a "dangerous position".
Possible loss of funds in LN can only be prevented by making changes at the basic level of bitcoin, at least through a soft fork. This situation presents a "difficult dilemma" for the first cryptocurrency community, Riar believes.
LN is a second-level solution for the bitcoin blockchain. The protocol is a network of payment channels between users, making it possible to carry out cheap transactions of the first cryptocurrency.
The attack vector detected by the developer allows you to steal funds from a channel participant, using the discrepancy between individual mempools.
He noted that the LN team has taken certain measures to mitigate the vulnerability risks. But, in his opinion, this will not stop "advanced" attackers.
"I think that this new class of cyclic substitution attacks puts LN in a very dangerous position, where a stable fix can only take place at the basic level, for example, through adding the history of all visible transactions to memory or some kind of consensus update," Riar wrote.
He stressed that this path will require maximum transparency and participation of the bitcoin community as a whole, since it involves changes in the full nodes of the blockchain.
"On the other hand, to fully explain why such changes would be justified for the sake of LN and its proper design, we may need to fully outline practical and critical attacks on the ~5,355 BTC publicly available in the ecosystem. A difficult dilemma. This can be a lesson in terms of deploying the bitcoin protocol," Riar added.
According to 1ML, at the time of writing, the LN capacity is 5,301 BTC, 63,253 channels are open on the network, and 14,717 nodes are operating.
According to him, the discovered new class of cyclic spoofing attacks puts the protocol in a "dangerous position".
Possible loss of funds in LN can only be prevented by making changes at the basic level of bitcoin, at least through a soft fork. This situation presents a "difficult dilemma" for the first cryptocurrency community, Riar believes.
LN is a second-level solution for the bitcoin blockchain. The protocol is a network of payment channels between users, making it possible to carry out cheap transactions of the first cryptocurrency.
The attack vector detected by the developer allows you to steal funds from a channel participant, using the discrepancy between individual mempools.
He noted that the LN team has taken certain measures to mitigate the vulnerability risks. But, in his opinion, this will not stop "advanced" attackers.
"I think that this new class of cyclic substitution attacks puts LN in a very dangerous position, where a stable fix can only take place at the basic level, for example, through adding the history of all visible transactions to memory or some kind of consensus update," Riar wrote.
He stressed that this path will require maximum transparency and participation of the bitcoin community as a whole, since it involves changes in the full nodes of the blockchain.
"On the other hand, to fully explain why such changes would be justified for the sake of LN and its proper design, we may need to fully outline practical and critical attacks on the ~5,355 BTC publicly available in the ecosystem. A difficult dilemma. This can be a lesson in terms of deploying the bitcoin protocol," Riar added.
According to 1ML, at the time of writing, the LN capacity is 5,301 BTC, 63,253 channels are open on the network, and 14,717 nodes are operating.
