Rootstock said a wave of user withdrawals temporarily strained the UTXO inventory of its bidirectional bridge, slowing fund exits from the Bitcoin sidechain after concerns spread over a recent incident on Liquid Network.

Sergio Lerner linked the pressure on withdrawals to market concern following a reported theft of 4,000 bitcoins from Liquid Network. According to the disclosed explanation, many users attempted to move funds out of Rootstock at roughly the same time, which temporarily exhausted the bridge’s available UTXO inventory for smoother processing.

The bottleneck centers on Rootstock’s PowPeg mechanism, which currently holds one large UTXO. Under that setup, each withdrawal sends out the requested funds while returning almost the entire remaining balance as change, reducing operational flexibility and forcing the system into a slower cycle.

That cycle requires 100 confirmations on the Bitcoin network before the next withdrawal can proceed from the resulting change output. Lerner said the result has been waiting times of between 36 and 46 hours for users seeking to withdraw, about 10 hours longer than the usual process.

He also said the delay should not keep extending beyond that range because a single outgoing transaction can group multiple withdrawal requests. To ease the backlog, the team is looking for actors willing to submit multiple small deposits, which would create additional UTXOs and help normalize processing times.

Why It Matters

The episode highlights a recurring pressure point in Bitcoin-linked sidechain and bridge infrastructure: even when there is no reported compromise of the affected network itself, stress in a related system can trigger user exits that expose design trade-offs in settlement architecture. In this case, UTXO concentration and Bitcoin confirmation rules became the main source of friction.

It also underscores how user confidence in one part of the Bitcoin ecosystem can affect another. For traders and infrastructure watchers, the key issue is not only bridge security, but whether withdrawal mechanisms can keep functioning smoothly during periods of sudden demand.