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Informational 22 Bitcoin

Remove spurious debug assertion added in 0.2

Public commit record

What the developer wrote

Authored by Matt Corallo

78/100 · Adequate
Remove spurious debug assertion added in 0.2

In 20877b3e229ffedee9483e2b021fdcb98c7a378a we added a
`debug_assert`ion to validate that if we call
`maybe_free_holding_cell_htlcs` and it doesn't manage to generate
a new commitment (implying `!can_generate_new_commitment()`) that
we don't have any HTLCs to fail, but there was no reason for that,
and its reachable.

Here we simply remove the spurious debug assertion and add a test
that exercises it.
✓ Descriptive subject✓ Names a concrete action or component✓ Provides detailed explanatory context✓ Mentions testing or verification
The short version

What changed, and why it matters

This commit removes a harmless debug-only assertion in the Lightning Dev Kit's channel handling code. The assertion could be triggered during normal operation when an HTLC (a conditional Bitcoin payment) in a 'holding cell' couldn't be added to a channel due to a dust-exposure limit. Debug assertions only fire in test builds, so production nodes were never affected. The commit also adds a regression test to exercise this edge case.

Recommended action

No immediate action required. This is a code-quality/test fix. Users running debug builds or CI may see fewer assertion failures. Reviewers should verify the new regression test adequately covers the edge case and that no other similar spurious assertions remain.

Security signals we found

01

Removal of a debug assertion that was reachable during normal protocol operation

02

Added regression test covering dust-exposure holding-cell HTLC failure path

03

No production code behavior change; only debug/test behavior changes

Risk score

Why this scored 22/100

Our methodology →
Potential impact 3/30
Exploitability 2/25
Stealth signal 2/15
Affected reach 3/15
Confidence 8/10
Evidence quality 4/5
Human-validated context

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