Happy Sat-urday Stackers,

For those not subscribed to the bitcoin-dev or lightning-dev mailing lists, you might've missed that @theariard disclosed a lightning protocol vulnerability. The flaw impacts all current lightning protocol implementations, though many have added at least partial safeguards. According to @theariard, a respected lightning security researcher, without a bitcoin soft fork, the vulnerability is bound to affect all future lightning implementations.

Many protocol leaders responded on the lists. Laolu, CTO of Lightning Labs, describes it as "a rather fragile attack." Matt Corallo of Lightning Developer Kit and Bastien of Eclair, used by Phoenix wallet, mirrored Laolu's sentiment adding, "more fundamental work most likely needs to happen at the bitcoin layer to allow L2 protocols to be more robust against that class of attacks." Long time core contributors like Peter Todd have already begun proposing consensus changes to close the attack vector.

Given the attack hasn't been seen on the network yet, and all lightning implementations have countermeasures in place, the practicality of the attack is debateable. The prevailing sentiment among protocol developers however is that the attack is real and serious.

Expect a comprehensive summary in the upcoming Bitcoin Optech newsletter.

Have a great weekend!

Yeehaw, Keyan A guy who works on Stacker News

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