1/ The cat's out of the bag. For the last 10 months, the @keep_project team, building on the work of @summa_one, has been quietly building a trustless bridge from Bitcoin to Ethereum. The spec is up at https://tbtc.network .





2/ The premise is simple. Existing federation-based approaches to Bitcoin sidechains are broken, exposing users to risks of censorship and theft of funds. These aren't acceptable tradeoffs, and they've kept us from better scaling and building with Bitcoin.

3/ For years, this problem appeared intractable. There's a widespread misconception that trustless sidechains on Bitcoin require a soft fork because "Bitcoin isn't expressive enough". Bollocks. Bitcoin is ready for this today.

4/ We've sacrificed decentralization for years because we thought we couldn't do better. Solutions like Liquid and WBTC are pragmatic approaches, but aren't censorship-resistant. Solutions like @Truthcoin's drivechains are awesome, but require changes to Bitcoin's consensus

5/ Turning an existing expressive chain into a Bitcoin sidechain gives us a robust set of tools to maintain a trustless peg.

6/ The first tool is what I'm calling a multi-federation. Instead of trusting Bitcoin deposits to a single wallet, each deposit in tBTC is dynamically assigned a new, disjoint threshold ECDSA signer set. We're no longer building an entire economy on 15 fixed custodians.

7/ The second is native asset bonding. On Ethereum, signers can put down ETH to ensure good behavior. If they misbehave, their funds can be seized.

8/ The last is validation. Using an expressive chain as a sidechain means we can validate SPV proofs from Bitcoin, proving deposits as well as any signer misbehavior. Our multi-federation is now trustless.

9/ Together, we're calling this approach a bonded, multi-federated peg. 🤓

10/ Solving this problem means bringing DeFi to Bitcoin- and Bitcoin to DeFi. Imagine taking out stablecoin loans against your Bitcoin with @MakerDAO, earning interest on your Bitcoin with @compoundfinance, and trading Bitcoin with @Uniswap- without counterparty risk.

11/ It's not just about DeFi. There will be Bitcoin dApps. There will be Bitcoin mixers. And one day, if we're lucky, there will be Bitcoin

@CryptoKitties 😺

12/ We're not alone. The mechanism design has been inspired, co-architected, discussed, and reviewed by some of the most brilliant folks in Bitcoin or Ethereum.

13/ Thanks to @_prestwich, @zmanian, @_charlienoyes, @danrobinson, @1HowardWu, @gakonst, @ljxie, @zooko, @hal2001, @vamsiraju, @rleshner, @louAboudHogben and many more for helping us figure out how and why to build this.

14/ A special thanks to @_charlienoyes, who kicked off this idea. He, @FEhrsam, @matthuang and @paradigm decided to lead our last round, joining an incredible group of supporters, including @a16z, @polychaincap, @TimDraper, @DekryptCapital, and @fabric_vc.



15/ This is all great, but when can you play with it? Well, yesterday, we demo'd a Bitcoin/Ethereum dApp at the http://crosschain.group 's first interop summit. We have deposits from the public Bitcoin testnet to a private Ethereum testnet working today. 👇





16 / Later this year, we'll be rolling over to public testnet. In the meantime, we need your help. Please 🙏, review the spec! We need as much mental firepower as we can get. Poke holes, ask questions. The team and I are right here waiting for it.

17/ If you're interested in getting further involved before we go live, my DMs are open. Let's build this thing!

Fin. If you've stuck around this long, give a high five to @piotrdyraga @liamzebedee @lightfiend @jnowakow8 @mdvnsn @taggartbg @Gluzman @LauraWallendal @jarrelljames_ @OliviaLovenmark and the rest of the team for nailing the dApp for yesterday's demo ✨ Can't wait to share it!

You can follow @mhluongo.

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