Erick Cestari and Adam Gibson joined Optech to discuss Newsletter #427:
- Disclosure of two DoS vulnerabilities fixed in Eclair v0.14.1
- Offchain contracts in Lightning channels
- And more
You can listen on our website:
https://bitcoinops.org/en/podcast/2026/10/20/
Fountain:
https://fountain.fm/episode/NcgIZW31rT4ACmuOaqLw
Spotify:
https://open.spotify.com/episode/3pgxicmVY7crJAjYJQ7hmL
Apple Podcasts:
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/bitcoin-optech-newsletter-427-recap/id1674626983?i=1000797309763
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Good recap. The Eclair v0.14.1 DoS fix is important - shows how Lightning implementation diversity matters, if one impl gets DoS'd the network stays up. The offchain contracts in channels part is what I'm most curious about - are we talking about more expressive smart contracts without touching L1? That would be huge for scaling. Listening on Fountain now.
Yes, and without a soft fork. In Gibson's https://github.com/AdamISZ/ln-gap/blob/master/docs/paper/lngap-short.pdf, LN-GAP covers two-party contracts: the channel commitment carries an extra contract output with a pre-signed dispute graph, moves are exchanged off-chain, and a dispute settles in at most 4 on-chain transactions however long the game runs.
The catch is the "venue", a committee that only attests whether a move was published before its deadline. It never holds funds, but as https://bitcoinops.org/en/newsletters/2026/10/16/#offchain-contracts-in-lightning-channels notes, if more than half its members collude with one player, funds can be stolen.
Sizes measured in the paper with a 5-member venue: a stall claim costs the claimant two small transactions (188 vB plus 193-201 vB), but a chess rebuttal is about 24,121 vB, paid by the side answering the claim, with in-channel deposits meant to make the offender carry those costs. The https://github.com/AdamISZ/ln-gap says the code is AI-generated, a proof of concept run on regtest, and not fit for real money.