Why is the Bitcoin Lightning Network at risk of centralization and censorship?

Antoine Riard, one of the prominent developers of the Bitcoin Lightning network who left the network in October, argued that the Lightning network is in danger of becoming increasingly centralized, has weaknesses and is vulnerable to censorship.
In his new statement, Riard warned of a new attack called “alternative cycling” that attackers could potentially use to target payment channels and steal funds.
According to Riard, many companies focused on Lightning are compromising the security of the network to please venture capitalists:

They need to wake up… together with other developers at the base layer, design a robust and stable fix, and maintain the long-term decentralization and openness of Lightning.

The Lightning Network is a second layer solution built on the Bitcoin blockchain and designed to improve the scalability and efficiency of the Bitcoin network. Through the Lightning Network, users can open payment channels, perform multiple transactions off-chain, and settle the final result on the Bitcoin blockchain. The alternate cycle attack is a new type of attack that allows an attacker to steal funds from a channel participant by exploiting inconsistencies between individual mempools.

Start trading with 10 thousand tomans!

You can trade all digital currencies with only 10,000 Tomans and with zero fees in Orez Plus!

Beginning

However, despite existing security concerns, Riard explained that the Lightning network has not seen as many attacks as Ethereum’s second layers; Because Lightning users usually store a small amount of funds in their wallet. According to data from the DefiLlama platform, a total of $194.1 million BTC is locked in the Lightning Network.