This Sunday, a researcher known as Burak conducted an unusual test, creating a multi-signature Bitcoin transaction with 998 of 999 signatures to test Taproot’s limits.
The test eventually caused a bug in LND, one of the most popular Lightning Network (LN) clients, that kept LN users locked out of their bitcoins for hours.
According to information from the Protos portal, this bug prevented users from creating or closing channels. That is, bitcoins could not be transferred from the main Bitcoin network to the Lightning network and vice versa.
The Extreme Test That Ultimately Crashed Bitcoins on the Lightning Network
Fortunately, Burak informed his Twitter followers that he had completed a massive multi-signature transaction for which he paid little. However, I was not aware that this would have caused a bug in the Lightning network.
“I just made a multisig tap script of 998 or 999” [assinaturas]and it only cost $4.90 in transaction fees.”
I just did a 998-of-999 tap script multisig and it only cost $4.90 in transaction fees.https://t.co/CvBHaRAqPu
— Burak (@brqgoo) October 9, 2022
In general, multi-signature transactions are performed with 2 or 3 keys. Therefore, such a transaction was 333 to 500 times larger than the most common, impressive for the low cost.
This caused one of the most well-known implementations of the Lightning Network to run into problems. As noted by a developer on Github, the script has exceeded the size allowed.
“Cannot process chain reorganization: could not get blocking […] the witness script is larger than the maximum allowed size.”
Problem solved, developers say
Without further ado, a new version of the LND was presented to the public this Sunday. Therefore, users are free to open and close Lightning network channels again so that they can move their bitcoins.
“We have identified the solution” […] of btcd, which will be included in a hotfix release (v0.15.2) for LND.”
Hi all, we are aware of the current issue affecting lnd nodes. We’ve found the fix for btcd’s wire-parsing library, which will be packaged in a hotfix release (v0.15.2) for par excellence
the PR fix is available for those who wish to apply directly: https://t.co/Vk3YNRQ9Zv
— Olaoluwa Osuntokun (@roasbeef) October 10, 2022
At the moment, the Lightning Network already has more than 5,000 BTC of capacity, which is equivalent to BRL 500 million. Being the most popular second-tier solution of bitcoin. It provides cheap, direct shipping and is already used by companies like McDonald’s.
Source: Live Coins
John Cameron is a journalist at The Nation View specializing in world news and current events, particularly in international politics and diplomacy. With expertise in international relations, he covers a range of topics including conflicts, politics and economic trends.
