Bitcoin Lightning Nodes Claimed 2.22 BTC in ‘Justice’ Against Thieves: BitMEX

Bitcoin (BTC) Lightning Network nodes have claimed 2.2 BTC in “justice transactions” to deter potential thieves, a BitMex Research analysis revealed on July 15.

A so-dubbed “justice transaction” is a punitive mechanism involving the closure of a lightning channel that is suspected to be attempting theft. As the report outlines:

“… by design, when a thief attempts to steal funds on the lightning network, if caught, they do not only lose the money they tried to steal, they lose all the funds in the relevant channel. This “punishment” is expected to act as a deterrent and is sometimes called “justice”.

BitMEX researchers claim to have potentially identified 241 justice transactions since the second-layer network’s in December 2017 — all the while noting that there is a possibility the data “includes false positives” and that other, more robust tools exist to identify such transactions than the “basic search methodology” used for their report.

BitMEX’s…