MAD-HTLC: Because HTLC is Crazy-Cheap to Attack

TL;DR

This paper introduces MAD-HTLC, a novel, miner-enforced security mechanism for HTLCs that deters misbehavior and bribery attacks, enhancing the security of blockchain-based payment channels and atomic swaps.

Contribution

It presents MAD-HTLC, a new design leveraging miners for security, along with formal proofs, implementation on Bitcoin and Ethereum, and analysis of bribery vulnerabilities.

Findings

MAD-HTLC effectively deters misbehavior with miner enforcement.

Implementation patches show easy integration into existing blockchain clients.

Bribery attacks can be cost-effective, with small incentives yielding large rewards.

Abstract

Smart Contracts and transactions allow users to implement elaborate constructions on cryptocurrency blockchains like Bitcoin and Ethereum. Many of these constructions, including operational payment channels and atomic swaps, use a building block called Hashed Time-Locked Contract (HTLC). In this work, we distill from HTLC a specification (HTLC-Spec), and present an implementation called Mutual-Assured-Destruction Hashed Time-Locked Contract (MAD-HTLC). MAD-HTLC employs a novel approach of utilizing the existing blockchain operators, called miners, as part of the design. If a user misbehaves, MAD-HTLC incentivizes the miners to confiscate all her funds. We prove MAD-HTLC's security using the UC framework and game-theoretic analysis. We demonstrate MAD-HTLC's efficacy and analyze its overhead by instantiating it on Bitcoin's and Ethereum's operational blockchains. Notably, current miner software makes only little effort to optimize revenue, since the advantage is relatively small. However, as the demand grows and other revenue components shrink, miners are more motivated to fully optimize their fund intake. By patching the standard Bitcoin client, we demonstrate such optimization is easy to implement, making the miners natural enforcers of MAD-HTLC. Finally, we extend previous results regarding HTLC vulnerability to bribery attacks. An attacker can incentivize miners to prefer her transactions by offering high transaction fees. We demonstrate this attack can be easily implemented by patching the Bitcoin client, and use game-theoretic tools to qualitatively tighten the known cost bound of such bribery attacks in presence of rational miners. We identify bribe opportunities occurring on the Bitcoin and Ethereum main networks where a few dollars bribe could yield tens of thousands of dollars in reward (e.g., \$2 for over \$25K).