Bitcoin time-delay locks could prevent bridge bugs from causing total losses: Rootstock co-founder

Rootstock co-founder Sergio Lerner has called for Bitcoin bridges to adopt mandatory withdrawal delays after about 4,000 BTC left Liquid Network’s federation wallet through an unauthorized peg-out. Summary A time-delay lock could give bridge operators several hours to identify and stop unauthorized withdrawals. Rootstock’s PowHSMs wait 4,000 blocks, or about 36 hours, before signing a peg-out. Lerner said compromised Rootstock functionaries could halt the peg but could not force an early withdrawal. Draft Bitcoin proposal BIP-443 could support vault designs that place withdrawal controls in consensus rules. Sergio Lerner, chief scientist and co-founder of RootstockLabs, told crypto.news that immediate settlement can turn a single validation error into a loss before bridge operators have time to respond. “Without a time-delay lock, a single validation bug and a total loss become the exact same event, because funds move the moment software says ‘yes,’” Lerner said. His comments followed an incident in which actors created unbacked L-BTC and used SideSwap’s peg-out service to withdraw nearly 4,000 BTC from the Liquid Federation wallet. Liquid described the actors as purported white-ha...