- Published on
Long-Term Support For Matt Morehouse
- Authors
- Name
- Gigi
- @dergigi
We are excited to announce that Matt Morehouse is receiving long-term support from OpenSats. Matt is a security researcher & developer focused on the detection and prevention of various bugs and attack vectors that could threaten the stability of the Lightning Network.
He is dedicated to enhancing the security and robustness of Lightning implementations through extensive fuzz testing, meticulous auditing of BOLT specs and Lightning implementations, and responsible disclosure of discovered bugs and vulnerabilities. His efforts aim to motivate greater investment in the security of Lightning, ensuring its reliability and trustworthiness.
His past contributions include:
- Responsible disclosure of the "fake channel" DoS vector.
- Discovery of a griefing attack in the interactive-tx protocol.
- Helped prevent a BOLT2 change that would allow the channel reserve to be violated.
- Overhauled LND's and CLN's fuzzing infrastructure.
- Various bug fixes and fuzz tests for CLN and LND.
In all likelihood, the Lightning Network will play a crucial role in any future that has Bitcoin scaling to 10 billion users. However, since the beginning of the network, the development of new features often had priority over the overall security and robustness of the network. Adding new features like dual funded channels, Taproot channels, splicing, and BOLT 12 is still the main priority for most developers and users, but all these features introduce added complexity. "Complexity is the worst enemy of security," to quote Bruce Schneier, "and our systems are getting more complex all the time." Lightning is no exception. Matt's research and fuzz testing of Lightning implementations is an effort to counteract this trend.
If we're going to make Lightning even more complex, we also need to ramp up the engineering effort we put towards making the network secure and robust. Because in the end it doesn't matter how feature-rich and easy-to-use the Lightning Network is if it can't keep user funds safe.
—Matt Morehouse
The OpenSats LTS program is made possible by generous donors like you. If you'd like to help make the Bitcoin and Lightning network as robust as it can be, consider donating to our General Fund.