Best Free Boltz Alternative to Swap Lightning to Onchain Bitcoin
Update (November 5, 2026): Boltz is still offline, and boltz.exchange no longer loads at all.
On August 3, 2026, Boltz took its swap services offline. A follow-up post confirmed the outage is open-ended:
On August 12, its founders stepped down. Boltz said that "a group of veteran Bitcoiners" had agreed to take over and continue the service, "with the goal of bringing swaps back as soon as possible", without naming them (@Boltzhq on X). Boltz hasn't posted since (checked November 5, 2026).
For a while the Boltz web app still opened, with its swap form, but it would not build a swap:
Now the domain itself is gone. On November 5, 2026, boltz.exchange, api.boltz.exchange and docs.boltz.exchange don't resolve at all (DNS answers NXDOMAIN), so a browser shows "This site can't be reached".
If your normal routine was "open Boltz, paste an address, move sats from Lightning to on-chain," you need somewhere else to go. Rizful does that specific job with no KYC and nothing to install. Step by step: How To Swap Lightning Funds to On-Chain. Other options are compared below.
What Boltz Actually Said
Straight from their own posts, so you are not relying on rumors:
- Swaps are disabled until further notice (August 3). There was no ETA, and Boltz explicitly said "do not expect swap services to resume shortly."
- No user funds were ever at risk. Boltz said so directly. As a bootstrapped company, the losses were theirs alone.
- Refunds. In August, Boltz said its API would stay up to process refunds cooperatively, and that unilateral refunds work regardless, because they do not depend on Boltz infrastructure.
- The cause was not one incident. Boltz described months of automated, AI-assisted probing of their infrastructure and several exploits, each contained, but with attackers iterating faster than a team their size could find and patch. They called it a major paradigm shift for Bitcoin services running an open source stack.
- New owners (August 12). The founders stepped down, and an unnamed "group of veteran Bitcoiners" agreed to take Boltz over, with work "to find and fix the vulnerabilities" under way. No date for swaps to return has been given.
Do not abandon it. Boltz's API, which handled cooperative refunds, no longer resolves, so the unilateral path is the one left: your refund file or rescue key, after the swap's timeout, which Boltz said "will work, as they do not depend on our infrastructure". Boltz's code is open source on GitHub; its swap lifecycle docs, which explained the refund states, were on the now-offline docs domain.
The knock-on effects reached further than Boltz's own users. Anything that used Boltz for its Lightning leg lost it at the same moment:
- Aqua Wallet's Lightning functionality went down the same day, and JAN3 said it also took out AgenticAQUA and the SamRock Protocol integration with BTCPay Server. On September 15, JAN3 brought back Lightning sends in an open beta of its own swap service, Indra; receiving is to come later (JAN3).
- Every BTCPay store running the Boltz plugin stopped accepting Lightning: these merchants have no node to fall back on, because not needing a node was the entire point of the plugin.
- Wallets with Boltz swaps built in, such as Alby Hub and Zeus, lost them until they switched providers.
We want to be clear about our own view here: Boltz is a classy operation. They ran a reliable swap service for years, they told users the truth quickly instead of going quiet, and they took the loss themselves rather than pushing it onto anyone else. We hope they are back soon, and we will happily point people at them again when they are.
In the meantime, you still need to move sats.
Why Rizful Works as a Boltz Replacement
For most people, Boltz was doing one thing: converting Lightning → on-chain BTC (or the reverse) without an exchange account, without KYC, and without waiting on a support queue.
Rizful covers both directions natively, inside one free wallet:
- Lightning → on-chain: send your Lightning balance to any Bitcoin address
- On-chain → Lightning: send BTC to a Rizful address, and it becomes spendable on Lightning once confirmed
Other things that matter if Boltz was your tool of choice:
- No KYC: create an account at rizful.com with an email and a password, and go. Rizful's sign-up page says anonymous email services, "hide my email" services and VPNs are OK; see sign up with a temporary or anonymous email address.
- Free account: no subscription, no minimum balance. When we sent 10,000 sats on-chain, Rizful showed the fees before we confirmed.
- Nothing to install: it runs in a browser on phone, tablet, or desktop.
- No swap timer to babysit: there is no lockup transaction, no refund file, and no window in which you must act. Your balance just sits in your vault until you send it.
How To Move Lightning Sats On-Chain With Rizful
- Sign up for a free account at rizful.com
- Get your sats into the vault: pay a Rizful invoice from your existing Lightning wallet, or send to your
@rizful.comLightning Address - Tap the Send icon and choose Send On-Chain
- Paste the destination Bitcoin address
- Enter the amount (at least 5,000 sats), check the fees in the Payment Summary, and confirm
- Wait for on-chain confirmation, usually within half an hour
On November 5, 2026, we sent 10,000 sats this way to an Electrum wallet: the fees were 50 sats (0.5%) plus a 705-sat network fee, and the transaction was in a block 39 seconds after mempool.space first saw it (a lucky block: its estimate was about ten minutes). The full walkthrough, with screenshots, is in How To Swap Lightning Funds to On-Chain. Going the other way is in How to Swap On-Chain Funds To Lightning.
As always, send a small test amount first, confirm it lands, then move the rest.
Other Ways To Move Lightning Sats On-Chain
Rizful isn't the only option. Here is what we found working, each from the product's own pages (checked November 5, 2026; fees change, so check them before you send):
| Option | What it does now | Fee, as the product states it | Account |
|---|---|---|---|
| Phoenix | Pays an on-chain address straight from its Lightning balance | "mining fees (user-chosen)" | None (a phone wallet) |
| Alby Hub | Swaps came back in v1.24.3 (October 16), through SATS Routing | The provider's fee, plus 1% to Alby (set in Alby Hub's code) | Your own node |
| Zeus | Swaps came back in v13.2.2 (September 23): SATS Routing by default, Coinos too | The provider's fee | Your own node |
| SATS Routing | A swap service built on forks of Boltz's open-source code; who runs it isn't public | 0.6% plus two mining fees (924 + 666 sats when we checked); 6,120 to 5,000,000 sats | No sign-up |
| Electrum 4.7+ | Pays on-chain addresses from its Lightning balance, through swap providers it finds over Nostr | Each provider's own | None (a desktop wallet) |
| Lexe | Sends on-chain | "Miner fee only" | An app account |
| Wallet of Satoshi | Sends on-chain | 1.95% plus a fixed fee or the miner fee; at least 0.00003 BTC | An app account |
| Kraken | Takes Lightning deposits; withdraw on-chain | Lightning deposit 0.3%; BTC withdrawal 0.00002 BTC | An exchange account |
| Blockstream Swaps | A closed beta for organizations | Not published | Beta access |
| Rizful | Sends from your Lightning balance to any Bitcoin address | Shown before you confirm; on our 10,000-sat send, 50 sats plus a 705-sat network fee; at least 5,000 sats | An email, no ID |
The Short Answer
While Boltz is offline, use Rizful if you want:
- Lightning sats moved to an on-chain Bitcoin address
- On-chain BTC made spendable on Lightning
- No KYC, no account at an exchange, no software to install
- A wallet that also handles Nostr zaps via NWC, a permanent Lightning Address, and payments for your app or site
Boltz built something good, and we hope this post is out of date soon. Until then, Rizful will get your sats where they need to go.