Lightning Network Developer Urges Fixes to Ensure Security
Date: 2023-11-30 Author: Dima Zakharov Categories: IN WORLD
Rethinking Priorities for Lightning Network
A Bitcoin Core developer, Antoine Riard, has voiced concerns regarding the current shift in the Lightning Network's development focus. According to Riard, the LN team seems to prioritize financial flow for investors over network security, raising critical issues within the protocol.
Critical Vulnerabilities and Departure
In October, Riard disclosed a critical vulnerability in the network, highlighting a new class of substitution-based cyclic attacks that jeopardize the protocol's integrity. Consequently, Riard decided to part ways with the team due to these concerns.
Addressing the Issues
In his comments to the media, Riard mentioned actively working on resolving the identified problem. He urged former colleagues to follow suit, emphasizing the necessity to collectively devise a robust solution at the foundational level, maintaining the network's long-term decentralization and openness.
Balancing Priorities
Riard also criticized LN-centric projects, indicating that many compromise their mission and security to appease investors. He noted that these projects often operate under organizations funded by venture capital or with similar short-term preferences, ultimately undermining end-users.
Common Tragedy in Action
He referred to this situation as a classic example of the "tragedy of the commons," where individuals and organizations, accessing a public resource, act in their own interests, depleting it over time.
Despite Challenges, Comparative Safety
Despite security concerns and potential centralization tendencies, Riard acknowledged that LN experiences fewer attacks compared to many L2 solutions for Ethereum. He attributed this to Lightning users usually storing smaller funds in their wallets.
Current Status of Lightning Network
As per 1ML data, the LN's capacity stands at 5362 BTC, with 61,982 open channels and 14,623 active nodes at the time of this writing.
Recalling Past Developments
Previously in November 2022, network developers addressed a critical error causing node synchronization failure.
In autumn 2023, Lightning Labs introduced the alpha version of the Taproot Assets v0.3 protocol for the Bitcoin mainnet. Further details on this solution were detailed in ForkLog's News+ format.
