Bitlayer's BitVM Bridge Debuts Its Mainnet, Offers Trust-Minimized Bitcoin DeFi

8 hours ago

Bitlayer's BitVM Bridge launched its mainnet connected Wednesday, enabling bitcoin (BTC) liquidity for decentralized concern done a trust-minimized framework.

The span keeps users' BTC harmless by locking it successful the BitVM astute declaration that operates nether the presumption that astatine slightest 1 honorable marketplace subordinate exists, acceptable to exposure malicious attempts to determination funds.

This trust-minimized setup starkly contrasts accepted custodians that impact centralized custody oregon distributed custodianship.

"Over the past year, we've dedicated important resources to processing the BitVM bridge, and we're thrilled to yet present this milestone to the community," Bitlayer co-founder, Kevin He said successful a property merchandise shared with CoinDesk.

"Post-mainnet deployment, our absorption shifts to scaling plus compatibility and deepening integration with further blockchain networks," He added.

YBTC, a gateway to BTC DeFi

Central to Bitlayer is YBTC, a token that straight represents the user's locked bitcoin. Its worth is pegged 1:1 with BTC, and it opens decentralized concern to BTC holders looking to make further output by allowing them to stake, lend, borrow, commercialized and supply liquidity crossed multi-chain decentralized exchanges.

The token's information stems straight from the transparent and verifiable BitVM astute declaration – dissimilar wrapped BTC (such arsenic WBTC), which relies connected a trusted cardinal entity to clasp the existent BTC.

Note that YBTC is chiseled from Bitlayer's autochthonal token, BTR, which is utilized for governance, fees and staking wrong the ecosystem and is slated to beryllium listed connected large centralized exchanges.

Front-and-reclaim model

Typically, eliminating centralized custodians implies longer waiting times, particularly successful the lawsuit of fraud-proof systems similar Bitlayer. Here, portion transactions are assumed to beryllium honest, anyone watching tin measurement successful to beryllium if thing went wrong.

To let capable clip for these important information checks, there's a built-in waiting period, typically 7 days, during which a fraudulent transaction could beryllium challenged. This tin pb to longer withdrawal times.

However, Bitlayer employs an innovative "front-and-reclaim" model, transferring the waiting play to specialized brokers oregon third-party liquidity providers. These entities supply the withdrawn BTC from their ain funds to users wrong astir 1 hour. Meanwhile, they hold for their archetypal seven-day information play to extremity earlier getting their funds backmost from the astute contract.

This attack offers some trustless information and a fast, convenient idiosyncratic experience.

"There is simply a beforehand mechanics successful BitVM span design, the pegout idiosyncratic volition get their BTC backmost astatine bitcoin artifact time," He told CoinDesk. "The waiting clip volition beryllium near to the broker(operator)."

Expansive ecosystem

Bitlayer is prioritizing integration with the Ethereum mainnet and large furniture 2 solutions, arsenic good arsenic exploring Solana and Bitcoin-native furniture 2s, specified arsenic Lightning Network applications. It has already secured integration with different starring ecosystems, including Sui, Base, Starknet, and Arbitrum, Sonic, Plume Network and Sundial.

"Our extremity is to marque YBTC universally accessible wherever important DeFi liquidity exists, enabling bitcoin to travel securely and seamlessly into divers ecosystems," BitLayer's squad told CoinDesk.

The squad added that it plans to found a information committee, merchandise audit reports and behaviour bug bounties and open-source their code, creating a roadmap that positions BitLayer's BitVM Bridge arsenic a important portion of infrastructure for BTC's aboriginal successful DeFi.

Read more: Bitlayer Joins Forces With Antpool, F2Pool, and SpiderPool to Supercharge Bitcoin DeFi

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