What happens if I lose access to my hub while a swap is in progress?

You can always recover your funds even if you

From Alby Hub version 1.18 you can seamlessly do one-off swaps between on-chain and lightning without going to an external website.

Swap Out (Lightning ➡️ On-chain)

Lightning to on-chain swaps are atomic - it's impossible for a swap to fail part way through and lose funds. However, make sure to read our backups guide to ensure you can always recover funds from your hub.

Swap In (On-chain ➡️ Lightning)

Swapping in requires you to send on-chain bitcoin from your wallet to an on-chain address. These funds will be claimed by Boltz if the swap succeeds. In case the swap fails (for example, Boltz cannot reach your hub to make the payment, or you do not have enough receiving capacity in your channels, or you accidentally send the wrong amount), you must be able to recover the funds that you have sent to the on-chain address.

As long as you leave your hub online, Alby Hub will automatically recover funds from failed swaps into your hub's on-chain balance.

In case you shut down your hub while a swap is in progress (which we do not recommend!) and later restart it, if the swap does still not succeed 24 hours after you initiated the swap, you can go to Settings -> Debug Tools in your hub and press the List Swaps button. Find the swap ID of the failed swap, and then click the Refund Swap button and paste the swap ID.

Last-Resort Recovery

In case you lose access to your hub (e.g. you self-host and your hard-drive dies - Alby Cloud doesn't have this problem 😉) you can still recover funds from failed swaps as long as you have backed up your recovery phrase.

Step 1: Derive Your Boltz Mnemonic From Your Recovery Phrase

In the following section you will need to enter your recovery phrase in an application to derive your Boltz mnemonic. DO NOT enter your recovery phrase in any website or application that you do not trust. If you have any concerns, please contact Alby Support.

Alby Hub uses a dedicated mnemonic derived from your main recovery phrase for Boltz swaps (see BIP-85). To derive this mnemonic you can import your hub's recovery phrase into any wallet that supports BIP-85. Some hardware wallets support BIP-85 child mnemonic derivation. Ian Coleman's BIP39 tool (Standalone offline version recommended) also supports deriving BIP-85 child mnemonics - search for "Show BIP85" and check the checkbox.

Use the following derivation index: 128260

Step 2: Execute Boltz Rescue

In the following section you will need to enter your Boltz mnemonic into Boltz Exchange to rescue funds from failed swaps. DO NOT enter your boltz mnemonic in any website other than the official boltz.exchange website. Your Boltz mnemonic will not be sent to Boltz - it will only be used client-side by the Boltz Web App.

Visit the Boltz Refund Page. Enter your Boltz Mnemonic.

The swaps that can be rescued will show up in a list. When you click on one you will be able to provide a refund address from your on-chain bitcoin wallet.