A Twitter user by the name “Burak” (@brqgoo) sent a large swath of the Lightning Network into turmoil on Tuesday morning, when he allegedly created a non-standard Bitcoin transaction that prevented users from opening new Lightning channels (connections between Lightning nodes).
Lightning is a layer 2 network that enables cheaper and faster Bitcoin transactions. Burak’s valid but non-standard transaction caused Bitcoin nodes running an implementation of Bitcoin called btcd, to suddenly stop creating new transaction blocks. This caused a corresponding glitch on all Lightning Network Daemon (LND) nodes. LND nodes rely on information from btcd Bitcoin nodes, and the glitch caused LND nodes to reject all new channel opening requests.
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Burak’s shenanigans disrupted a good chunk of the Bitcoin and Lightning ecosystems. Nevertheless, one could argue the community’s anti-fragility was on full display. Core Lightning (CLN) nodes that rely on Bitcoin Core, the most popular implementation of Bitcoin, were unaffected (although this seems to have been by design). Additionally, the bug Burak exploited was quickly patched (thanks to Elle Mouton and Oliver Gugger).
“Burak was well aware of the consequences triggered by the transaction. I think everyone can decide for themselves if that is to be considered malicious or not,” Rene Pickhardt, Bitcoin and Lightning developer and educator, told CoinDesk. Pickhardt co-authored the popular “Mastering Lightning” book and helped demystify many technical aspects of this story.
How should Bitcoin handle bugs and exploits?
Burak’s actions not only sparked lively exchanges on Twitter, but also raised a key question – how should the Bitcoin community handle similar exploits in the future?
“Generally, developers promote a well-known culture of responsible disclosure and ethics when discovering exploitable bugs. Lightning Labs had a reasonable plan for patching this problem beforehand, but maybe Burak felt the situation was more urgent and wanted to light a fire under [them],” John Cavarlho told CoinDesk. Cavarlho is the CEO of Bitcoin software firm, Synonym. The firm’s CTO, Reza Bandegi, also helped clarify technical aspects of this story.