The controversial BIP-110 Bitcoin upgrade attempt has effectively stalled following a failed fork that resulted in the removal of its lead editor, while the BTCPay Foundation has launched a substantial recovery bounty after attackers drained merchant funds from its payment infrastructure.
The soft fork championed by developer Luke Dashjr encountered difficulties when supporters split onto their own chain on Saturday. According to reports, the nascent network managed to mine two blocks within an eight-hour period before stopping entirely Decrypt. This cessation of block production marked a significant setback for the proposed protocol changes, which had generated considerable debate within the Bitcoin development community regarding the technical direction of the network.
Following the stalled fork attempt, Dashjr has been removed from his position as a Bitcoin Improvement Proposal (BIP) editor. The removal comes directly after the chain split failed to maintain momentum, having produced only two blocks before halting operations. The BIP-110 proposal had sought to implement changes through the soft fork mechanism, but the brief operational period of the supporting chain suggests the upgrade path faced immediate technical or consensus-related obstacles.
Concurrent with these protocol-level developments, the BTCPay Server project faced unrelated security vulnerabilities that compromised merchant funds. The open-source payment processing infrastructure reported that attackers successfully stole LND (Lightning Network Daemon) credentials last week, subsequently draining merchant Lightning wallets connected to the platform CoinDesk. The breach specifically affected bitcoin payment servers utilizing the Lightning Network integration, with attackers leveraging the stolen credentials to access and withdraw funds from affected merchant accounts.
In response to the security incident, the BTCPay Foundation has established a recovery bounty program. The organization has pledged to pay 10% of any successfully recovered funds, capping the reward at 3 BTC, valued at approximately $190,000 CoinDesk. This white-hat incentive structure aims to encourage security researchers and blockchain analysts to trace and potentially recover the stolen cryptocurrency assets. The bounty represents a significant commitment to recouping losses for affected merchants, reflecting the severity of the credential compromise that enabled the unauthorized draining of Lightning wallets through the payment server infrastructure.