Boltz, the non-custodial bridge that routes swaps between bitcoin's mainchain, the Lightning Network and Liquid, disabled its service indefinitely on Monday, saying months of automated, AI-assisted attacks on its infrastructure have outpaced its ability to ship fixes.
Boltz first took its swap services offline at 5:54 am ET on Aug. 3 without explanation. In a follow-up statement about six hours later, the team said the suspension will last "until further notice" and described a months-long pattern of intrusions.
"Over the past months we have seen a steady rise in automated, AI-assisted probing of our infrastructure, and we have dealt with several exploits," the team wrote. "Each was contained, but the pattern is clear: attackers now iterate faster than a team our size can find and patch."
The shutdown cuts off the swap rails behind Lightning and Liquid payments in wallets such as Bull Bitcoin and Aqua, and it attaches a name to a fear that has been building among open-source developers: small teams defending public codebases against attackers armed with AI tooling.
The team said the pressure intensified in recent days as it found itself "actively targeted by what appear to be multiple resourceful groups," and that after reviewing its own security scans it "cannot responsibly re-enable Boltz swaps."
