AI-assisted hackers force Boltz to pull the plug on Bitcoin swaps

On Monday, Boltz indefinitely shut off its swaps. The non-custodial service that lets users move Bitcoin between the Lightning Network and Bitcoin’s base layer told users a rising wave of AI-assisted attacks had made it unsafe to keep running.

Lightning users and the small open-source teams hold much of Bitcoin’s payment plumbing. Boltz says the problem is how quickly attackers can operate now.

Boltz says attackers now iterate faster than fixes

Boltz said in posts on X that swaps are off “until further notice,” with no timeline for any possible return.

“To be clear: this is not a response to a single incident,” the Bitcoin bridge builder said. Over the past few months, it had seen a steady increase in automated, AI-assisted probing of its systems and had dealt with several exploits, each of which was contained.

“Attackers now iterate faster than a team our size can find and patch,” Boltz said. The recent security scans left the company unable to responsibly turn swaps back on while “being actively targeted by what appear to be multiple resourceful groups while we race to deploy fixes.”

The company described the change “a major paradigm shift for Bitcoin services operating on an open source stack.” It told users, “Do not expect swap services to resume shortly.”

Update: Boltz will stay disabled until further notice.

Our API remains available to process refunds cooperatively. In any case, unilateral refunds will work, as they do not depend on our infrastructure.

Our support team stays reachable.

To be clear: this is not a response to a… https://t.co/kv8zWt4bym

— Boltz – Non-Custodial Bitcoin Bridge (@Boltzhq) August 3, 2026

Boltz confirmed that no one lost funds, as it never takes control of customer coins. The swaps are done via hashed timelock contracts, a mechanism that either completes a trade in full or reverses it within a single block.

Swaps move value between regular BTC, Lightning BTC, and Liquid Network BTC. “No user funds were ever at risk,” Boltz said. It continued, “Losses were ours alone.”

Boltz has not revealed its transaction volumes, while DeFiLlama showed its total value locked at ~$262,000. The API is still running and operational, so users can process cooperative refunds, and unilateral refunds work anyway, as they don’t depend on Boltz infrastructure.

AI keeps showing up in Bitcoin’s biggest hacks

Bull Bitcoin told users that Lightning payments and Liquid-to-Bitcoin swaps in its wallet would now “fail without explanation” while it searches for a fix. Aqua Wallet issued a similar notice and said it was working with Boltz to find an alternative route for Lightning swaps.

The shutdown is a warning to anyone building on an open stack with a small headcount. AI attackers are getting more sophisticated, and the cost of maintaining enterprise-grade security “will price out many innovative startups” working on services tied to client funds, even non-custodial ones, said Swan co-founder Yan Pritzker.

AI software has been connected to a seed-phrase exploit of Coldcard, a hardware wallet implicated in more than $100 million in stolen Bitcoin. Cryptopolitan also reported the same trend in DeFi, where GoPlus Security said more than $1.5 million was drained in four smart-contract attacks in 48 hours.

A16z crypto found the success rate of an off-the-shelf AI agent exploiting known vulnerabilities jumped from 10% to 70% once it was fed structured attack knowledge.

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