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Low 42 Bitcoin

Default to anchor channels

Public commit record

What the developer wrote

Authored by elnosh

50/100 · Thin
Default to anchor channels

Set `negotiate_anchors_zero_fee_htlc_tx` default
to true.
✓ Descriptive subject✓ Provides an explanatory body
The short version

What changed, and why it matters

This commit changes the default setting so that new Lightning channels will use 'anchor outputs' whenever possible. Anchor outputs are a safer, more modern channel type, but they require the user to keep some on-chain bitcoin available to pay fees during an emergency force-close. To make sure users notice this new responsibility, the library now also forces every inbound channel request to be manually accepted. The change is a deliberate policy update, not a hidden bug, but it could surprise users who are not prepared to maintain the extra on-chain reserve.

Recommended action

Treat this as a behavior-changing release note rather than a vulnerability. Users upgrading should review their wallet's ability to provide on-chain UTXOs for anchor fee bumping and update their event handling to process `Event::OpenChannelRequest` for every inbound channel. Downstream tests that assume legacy channels should explicitly set `negotiate_anchors_zero_fee_htlc_tx = false`.

Security signals we found

01

Default channel type changed to anchor outputs, which alter fee-bumping assumptions

02

Inbound channels now require manual acceptance to ensure user awareness of reserve requirements

03

Documentation explicitly warns that users must maintain an on-chain reserve for force-close fee bumping

04

No cryptographic, memory-safety, or parsing vulnerability is present in the diff

Risk score

Why this scored 42/100

Our methodology →
Potential impact 12/30
Exploitability 5/25
Stealth signal 3/15
Affected reach 10/15
Confidence 8/10
Evidence quality 4/5
Human-validated context

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