BTC source swaps can expire after funds are sent because 3-conf wait exceeds reservation TTL

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Summary

alw swap now --from btc --to tao can successfully reserve a miner and broadcast the BTC source transaction, then fail to initiate any on-chain swap because the reservation expires before the required BTC confirmations arrive.

In this case, BTC was sent to the selected miner address, the reservation later disappeared, next_swap_id did not advance, and no TAO was received.

This looks like a mismatch between:

• BTC source confirmation requirement: 3 confirmations, displayed by CLI as ~30 min
• reservation TTL: ~50 Bittensor blocks / ~10 min

The CLI warns not to send near the end of the reservation, but even sending immediately can miss the TTL when BTC requires 3 confirmations.

Reproduction / observed flow

Quote:

alw swap quote --from btc --to tao --amount 0.00018

Selected route:

UID 136
Rate: 1 BTC -> 255 TAO
Expected receive: 0.04544100 TAO after 1% fee

Swap command:

alw swap now \
  --from btc \
  --to tao \
  --amount 0.00018 \
  --receive-address 5E5PDWy3msrnA4uucy5bWRPVkFrzip4DTNN2qcEnPe5Tb24j \
  --from-address bc1qqnja4d8q0jxnv06v6f2sxj9570klg3hm46cnul \
  --auto \
  --btc-fee-rate 3

CLI output showed:

Miner reserved! You have ~10 min to send your funds before the reservation expires.
...
BTC sent (tx: 51c83350cd3dc695f6a53bbfe0709aeb04cba5387fa47a44ffd790457e234c3a)
...
V1: queued Queued — 0/3 confirmations. Validator will auto-initiate when confirmed.
Waiting for 3 BTC confirmation(s) (~30 min).

On-chain / transaction evidence

BTC tx:

51c83350cd3dc695f6a53bbfe0709aeb04cba5387fa47a44ffd790457e234c3a

Mempool:

https://mempool.space/tx/51c83350cd3dc695f6a53bbfe0709aeb04cba5387fa47a44ffd790457e234c3a

Confirmed output to selected miner BTC address:

bc1qdpw3zrh50ygk8akrg69lnyt3q3qkkdwxw9pth2
18,000 sats / 0.00018 BTC

Change output back to source wallet:

bc1qqnja4d8q0jxnv06v6f2sxj9570klg3hm46cnul
1,373 sats

Expected TAO receive address:

5E5PDWy3msrnA4uucy5bWRPVkFrzip4DTNN2qcEnPe5Tb24j

Expected receive amount:

0.04544100 TAO

Current Allways state after BTC confirmation

alw view reservation:
Reservation is no longer active on-chain.
Either the reservation expired before you sent funds, or your swap already initiated and has since completed.
Local reservation state cleared.

alw view active-swaps:
No swaps found

alw view swap 5:
Swap 5 does not exist. Next swap ID: 5.

Coldkey TAO balance did not increase.

Expected behavior

The CLI/protocol should not allow a BTC source swap to enter a state where funds are sent but the reservation TTL is too short for the required confirmation policy.

Possible fixes:

• extend reservation TTL for BTC source swaps to cover the required confirmation window plus margin
• reduce BTC confirmation requirement or make it configurable by risk policy
• prevent auto-send when required_confirmations * btc_block_time exceeds remaining reservation TTL
• after BTC tx broadcast, extend/finalize reservation automatically until confirmation can initiate the swap
• surface a hard preflight error instead of a warning when the confirmation window cannot fit inside the reservation TTL

Impact

This creates a user-funds-loss condition: BTC can be sent to the miner, but no swap is initiated and no TAO is delivered.