Bitcoin Swap Service Boltz Disables Operations Due to AI-Assisted Hacking

Boltz, a non-custodial Bitcoin swap service, says it is disabling its service until further notice after a rise in AI-assisted hacking attempts over the last few months.

In a post to X on Monday, Boltz said the decision came after seeing a steady increase in “automated AI-assisted probing” of its infrastructure this year.

“Over the past months… we have dealt with several exploits. Each was contained, but the pattern is clear: attackers now iterate faster than a team our size can find and patch.”

“After reviewing the results of our own recent security scans, we cannot responsibly re-enable Boltz swaps, especially as we are being actively targeted by what appear to be multiple resourceful groups while we race to deploy fixes.”

Boltz’s operational pause highlights the difficulty that smaller development teams are facing, as attackers discover vulnerabilities and adapt exploits faster than they can respond.

“In the past few days alone we saw a drastic acceleration [of attacks] and we do not believe this asymmetry will reverse,” said Boltz.

Solana’s security chief calls for automated defense

In July, Solana Foundation’s new chief information security officer, Michael Coates, told Cointelegraph there is a need to switch to automated defenses in the age of AI.

“We’re at a tipping point as an industry where humans cannot scale to meet these threats,” said Coates.

“The only path forward we have is to have autonomous defense that operates at the speed of machines.”

PayPerQ, a pay-per-prompt AI service that takes payment in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, said it has also been dealing with a surge in exploits, possibly AI-powered.

“We’ve been fighting off exploits every other week for several months, most of which we believe are AI-powered. It’s a very dangerous time out there.”

No user funds at risk

Boltz lets users perform non-custodial, trustless atomic swaps, moving Bitcoin and Bitcoin-denominated assets between the mainnet and different layers of Bitcoin such as Lightning Network and Liquid Network.

DefiLlama shows total value locked on Boltz at the time of writing is $180,860.

Boltz said no user funds have ever been at risk, as all Boltz swaps use advanced cryptography and are non-custodial, which means users retain full control of their assets throughout the swap process.

Boltz said its API will remain available to process refunds, and its support team will stay reachable.

“What we are seeing is a major paradigm shift for Bitcoin services operating on an open source stack, and it needs careful analysis. Do not expect swap services to resume shortly.”