Boltz Halts Bitcoin Swaps Amid AI-Powered Attack Surge
Boltz, a non-custodial Bitcoin bridge service, has halted its swaps indefinitely due to an increase in AI-assisted attacks. The company cited that attackers are now iterating faster than their team can find and patch vulnerabilities.
The shutdown is not a response to a single incident but rather a result of the growing sophistication of AI-powered attacks. Boltz has been dealing with several exploits over the past few months, each of which was contained.
The company emphasized that no user funds were ever at risk as they never take control of customer coins. Swaps are done via hashed timelock contracts, a mechanism that either completes a trade in full or reverses it within a single block.
Boltz's shutdown serves as a warning to other services operating on an open-source stack with small teams. AI attackers are becoming increasingly sophisticated, and the cost of maintaining enterprise-grade security may price out many innovative startups.