Bitvm

Exciting BitVM Launch

On October 9th, 2023, Bitcoin Researcher and expert in ZK technology Robin Linus released the BitVM whitepaper, sparking significant discussions within the Bitcoin community. While the technical intricacies of BitVM will be introduced in later chapters, its overarching capability can be summarized as the ability to compute anything on the Bitcoin network.

It is noteworthy that, prior to this revelation, several attempts had been made to construct Layer 2 solutions on Bitcoin. However, due to the inherent programmability limitations of Bitcoin itself, these endeavours, including RGB, Stacks, Rootstock, and other Bitcoin Layer 2 projects, encountered challenges in achieving successful implementations.

Although the BitVM whitepaper theoretically demonstrates the feasibility of a BTC L2, there are many areas to optimize, such as the bisection protocol and scripting language. Detailed insights into the specific design and developmental progress can be obtained on Github.

Regardless, BitVM has empowered visionary developers by showcasing the potential for constructing authentic Layer 2 solutions on Bitcoin. Subsequently, numerous Bitcoin Layer 2 projects emerged, with some leveraging Bitcoin as a Finalization Layer based on BitVM, while others utilized Bitcoin as a Data Availability (DA) Layer.

A common thread among these projects is the incorporation of the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) as the execution layer for their respective Layer 2 solutions.