Babylon Labs, developer of the most important BTC staking protocol, is constructing a trust-minimized Bitcoin bridge with the Cosmos community to boost the world’s oldest blockchain’s interoperability.
In partnership with Bitcoin builders Fiamma, Babylon is utilizing the BitVM2 computing paradigm, which is designed to permit Ethereum-style good contracts on Bitcoin, which then paves the way in which for zero-knowledge know-how.
Zero-knowledge computations enable completely different events to confirm that info is correct with out truly revealing to one another what the knowledge is. On this sense, it’s foundational to bridging digital property between completely different blockchains.
Builders like Babylon Labs and Fiamma are aiming to unlock the deep wells of worth saved in BTC to finance different ecosystems and permit it to be transacted on blockchains which can be freed from a few of Bitcoin’s limitations of velocity and scale.
This kinds a part of a broader motion to extract better utility from Bitcoin, much like that which is commonplace on networks like Ethereum. Babylon’s Bitcoin staking protocol, which is likely one of the foremost initiatives on this sector, is billed as a approach of utilizing BTC to safe different protocols and decentralized purposes and has a complete worth locked (TVL) of round $5.5 billion.
The introduction of BitVM2’s predecessor by Robin Linus in October 2023 was hailed as a breakthrough for making Bitcoin extra programmable, by enabling a rollup that may deal with quicker and cheaper transactions with out compromising safety. This might then enable bridges to securely switch BTC to the rollup, and later deliver the BTC again in order that deposits will be withdrawn.
BitVM impressed loads of fervor amongst builders constructing initiatives on Bitcoin, together with some centered on bridging to different networks. Zero-knowledge rollup Citrea, which is backed by Galaxy Digital, deployed a BitVM-based bridge to the Bitcoin testnet final September. It’s designed to be suitable with the Ethereum Digital Machine (EVM), the smart-contracts-executing software program that powers the Ethereum protocol.
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