A Deep-Dive on BitVM

BitVM is a new computing paradigm enabling arbitrary compute on Bitcoin without a soft fork

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In this issue we bring you a deep-dive on BitVM, a new computing paradigm on Bitcoin.

TECH

The BitVM has taken the entire crypto world by storm this week. On one end we’ve heard chants of “All alts are dead! Long live Bitcoin!” and on the other end we’ve heard complaints of “...but why? Why not just use Ethereum?”

The truth, as always, lies somewhere in between.

Yes, BitVM is one of the most exciting things to happen to Bitcoin this year. Just the fact that we are talking about doing arbitrary compute on Bitcoin L1 without any protocol upgrades is mind blowing!

At the same time, BitVM is still in the earliest stages. BitVM smart contracts are two party only, single use, and you only have 3 functions to choose from, none of which are all that helpful yet.

So it is a long difficult road to get from where we are now to the promised land of a general purpose zk-verifier implemented in BitVM enabling true L2s on Bitcoin.

I’m most excited for this dream of a zk-verifier implemented in BitVM, but a close second for me would be a trust-minimized bridge for sidechains. You can’t do trustless bridging with BitVM, but you can likely reduce your trust assumptions to a single trusted party. You can have many verifiers, and as long as one verifier is honest, then everything works. This is very cool.

If you want to do more digging, here is my 3-part series on BitVM on X:

Part 1: Community Thoughts From the First 24 Hours - https://x.com/BobBodily/status/1711581484254192013

Part 2: Excitement and Challenges - https://x.com/BobBodily/status/1711942512603181145

Part 3: Limitations and Moving Forward - https://x.com/BobBodily/status/1712305639366811997

And if you REALLY want to keep digging, these BitVM resources are fantastic.

  1. White Paper: The lauded and applauded white paper that started it all, from Robin himself (https://twitter.com/robin_linus): https://bitvm.org/bitvm.pdf

  2. GitHub: Super Testnet’s (https://twitter.com/super_testnet) GitHub repo with the only current implementation of the BitVM. It currently has 3 functions: count 0s, greater than less than, and addition: https://github.com/supertestnet/tapleaf-circuits

  3. BitVM Telegram channel: Where most technical discussion is taking place right now: https://x.com/robin_linus/status/1711757377983086894?s=20

  4. Bitcoin Magazine article: Shinobi gives an excellent technical breakdown of BitVM: https://bitcoinmagazine.com/technical/the-big-deal-with-bitvm-arbitrary-computation-now-possible-on-bitcoin-without-a-fork

  5. Trust Machines explainer thread: Simplifying how the BitVM works: https://x.com/trustmachinesco/status/1712117354321367062?s=20

  6. Bitcoin Illustrated Diagram: A fantastic comic/diagram explaining BitVM in simple terms: https://x.com/BTCillustrated/status/1712440417524810227?s=20

  7. Trust minimized sidechains: Thread from Salvatoshi https://x.com/salvatoshi/status/1712772143753408824?s=20