The founders of the non-custodial bitcoin service Boltz have officially announced their retirement from the project after a series of serious hacker attacks. According to preliminary information, the attackers carried out these attacks with the active use of artificial intelligence technologies. The developers emphasized that the incidents were becoming more frequent, intense, and technically challenging. Several attacks proved to be completely successful and led to significant financial losses for the service itself. The team separately noted that the funds of ordinary users were not affected at all, since Boltz does not store client assets. The entire financial risk from successful attacks was borne solely by the project developers themselves. The platform allowed for atomic swaps and supported transfers between the main bitcoin network, the Lightning Network and the Liquid Network.

To prevent further damage from the actions of AI hackers, the developers completely suspended all operations on August 3. At the time of writing, the service is still not working, and the official message about the transfer of the project is fixed on the main page. The creators honestly admitted that it was extremely difficult for a small team of five people to withstand attacks of such a high level in the long term. Boltz will now transfer to an unnamed group of experienced bitcoin veterans, who will provide the project with the necessary capital and additional engineering resources. The new owners have already begun to actively search for and fix the discovered vulnerabilities in the code. They expect to resume full-fledged operation of swaps soon, but the team has not yet disclosed the names of the investors. All of the original Boltz founders immediately left the company and will no longer hold any formal or leadership roles in the project. At the same time, they will retain the opportunity to voluntarily participate in the further improvement of the open source code of the service.

Almost simultaneously with the Boltz story, there was an important appeal from the Bitcoin Policy Institute group and representatives of the crypto industry to leading AI developers. They called on large companies to create special programs for trusted access to the most powerful models for bitcoin developers and other critical open source financial infrastructure. Among the signatories of this letter were such well-known companies as Block, Coinbase, Strategy, BitGo, Kraken, Ledger, Trezor, MARA and Galaxy. The authors of the appeal believe that the rapid development of AI is noticeably changing the balance of power between attackers and defenders. Advanced models are already capable of analyzing large codebases, finding potential vulnerabilities, and significantly speeding up complex cybersecurity work. However, access to such powerful tools for open source software developers may be severely limited by the security mechanisms of the AI services themselves or by the lack of access to specialized security programs.

As a result, a dangerous paradox arises: attackers are getting more and more powerful AI tools, and legitimate researchers may be forced to use less capable models. Therefore, the Bitcoin Policy Institute suggests not removing restrictions for everyone, but creating special controlled programs for trusted developers and opening direct communication channels with cybersecurity teams. Recall that in the first half of 2017, cryptocurrency projects lost about one billion one hundred million dollars due to hacking. The number of confirmed exploits was a record for a six-month period, according to data from the Blockaid analytical platform.