On August 3rd, Boltz, the non-custodial swap service most of the Lightning ecosystem quietly relied on to move sats between on-chain, Lightning and Liquid went dark.
If you’ve ever used a Lightning wallet like Aqua, Bull Bitcoin, or Zeus, you’ve probably used Boltz without knowing it: submarine swaps in and out of channels, Liquid bridging, the plumbing that makes self-custodial Lightning actually usable day to day. When it went down, that plumbing went with it.
My friend Luke and I have spent the last weeks building a fork of Boltz codename “SATS Routing”, a non-custodial atomic swap service covering the same three rails Boltz did: Bitcoin on-chain, Liquid, and Lightning, and it’s now live. Here’s what happened, and what SATS Routing is (and isn’t).
What just happened to Boltz
Boltz suspended all Bitcoin mainchain, Lightning, and Liquid swap services indefinitely on August 3, 2026, citing months of AI-assisted attacks that outpaced its patching capacity. The team explained the decision didn’t stem from a single incident: for months the infrastructure had faced a steady increase in AI-assisted automated probing, with several exploits contained one by one, before the pace accelerated sharply in the final days. The non-custodial design protected user funds, but a team Boltz’s size could no longer keep pace with the attacks.
Three wallets: Aqua, Bull Bitcoin and Zeus, lost Boltz-powered swap access within hours of the halt. This wasn’t a niche tool going down. It was load-bearing infrastructure for several major self-custodial Lightning wallets.
About ten days later, the story got another chapter. Boltz’s three founders: Kilian Rausch, Michael and Karl stepped down from the company (as they announced on X), handing control of the non-custodial swap service to a group identified only as “veteran Bitcoiners.” The incoming operators agreed to provide capital and engineering resources, with work to find and fix vulnerabilities already underway, though no restoration timeline was given. As of publication, no names have been attached to the new operators, and the swap service has not resumed (at the moment of this article).
I want to be precise here, because precision matters more than hype: SATS Routing has no affiliation with Boltz, its founders, or its new operators. It’s an independent, non-custodial atomic swap service built by private volunteers for the community; not a fork claiming succession, not an “official” replacement. Just a working alternative for a gap that opened up, born from a fork of the system.
Why this matters if you use Lightning
If you self-custody on Lightning, submarine swaps are how you get liquidity in and out of channels without ever giving up custody of your coins. Non-custodial swaps between Bitcoin, Lightning and Liquid let you stay in full control throughout: you’re never trusting a third party with your keys, only trusting the smart contract to do what it’s designed to do. When the main provider for that goes offline indefinitely, wallets that route through it start failing for their users, and the whole self-custodial Lightning stack gets a little more fragile.
Introducing SATS Routing
SATS Routing is live now at satsrouting.exchange. It’s limited by design to the same three rails Boltz covered: on-chain Bitcoin, Lightning, and Liquid and nothing else. The underlying system works the same way Boltz’s well-known implementation does: atomic swaps secured by hash time-locked contracts (HTLCs). Either the swap completes in full on both sides, or the funds return automatically to the sender. No account, no custody, no counterparty risk beyond the smart contract itself.
Swap limits: 50,000 sats minimum, 5,000,000 sats maximum per swap, at the moment of this article was written.
Fees: structured the same way Boltz’s were: a service fee plus a network fee that covers the actual on-chain cost of locking and claiming funds, which varies by direction and current network conditions. I’m deliberately not quoting exact percentages here since they shift with the mempool; check the live rate shown before confirming any swap.
We want to serve the community, we would like to give an alternative in a complicate period for the Bitcoin development. Feel free to participate to the project with code, ideas, and activity.
How to use it
The flow mirrors Boltz’s well-known process, since SATS Routing runs on the same swap mechanics:
Choose your direction: on-chain → Lightning, Lightning → on-chain, Liquid → Lightning, Lightning → Liquid, or on-chain ↔ Liquid.
Set the amount: anywhere between actual swap limits.
Get your swap address or invoice : depending on direction, you’ll either get a Bitcoin/Liquid address to send to, or you’ll pay a Lightning invoice.
Send the funds. The HTLC locks your side of the swap.
Download the refund file if prompted. This is standard practice on atomic swap services and matters: if anything goes wrong before the swap completes, this file is what lets you reclaim your funds unilaterally, without depending on the service at all. Don’t skip it.
Receive on the other side once the required confirmations (on-chain) or the Lightning payment settles.
As with Boltz, nothing here requires an account, or handing custody to anyone at any point: the swap either completes atomically or your funds return to you.
What comes next
Boltz’s shutdown was a reminder that “non-custodial” protects your funds, not the business behind the rails: and that even well-run infrastructure can buckle under attacks moving faster than a small team can patch. SATS Routing won’t replace what Boltz was for the whole ecosystem overnight, but it’s live, it’s non-custodial, and it covers the same ground: on-chain, Lightning, Liquid.
Try it at satsrouting.exchange. If you hit issues or have feedback, reach out directly — a project like this gets better from real usage, not launch-day polish.