Developers Release BitVM2 White Paper to Advance Bitcoin Programmability Goals

Bitcoin developer Robin Linus last year proposed a theoretical approach to making the Bitcoin blockchain more programmable. Now, he's launching a second iteration called "BitVM2," which it says offers significant improvements that could bring the concept closer to real-world deployments. The project will rely on advanced cryptography and innovative design to build a secure "bridge" to move Bitcoin from the main network to a secondary network known as a "rollup." According to the white paper released this week by Linus and five co-authors, the basic setup involves using cryptography to compress a program into subroutines that are then executed in Bitcoin transactions. These programs are then "validated" across three on-chain transactions, essentially ensuring that no one is trying to cheat or steal. In previous versions, verification could take up to 70 submissions, according to Alexei Zamyatin, one of the co-authors. It is reported that Alexei Zamyatin works alone for the Bitcoin L2 network Build on Bitcoin (BOB). A key improvement in the new version is that anyone can challenge suspicious transactions, a feature called "permissionless challenges." The original BitVM was released last October but never really saw any real deployments, with only a fixed set of operators being able to launch challenges. “This design gives us these major improvements,” Zamyatin said in a video interview. “We now have a complete and comprehensive description of the BitVM paradigm.” (CoinDesk)