It’s been 2 months since WBTC (Wrapped Bitcoin) was announced to the ecosystem. We have been hard at work since, and we would like to share an update regarding the technical, ecosystem and governance progress.

Tech

Smart Contracts Completed, Audited and Deployed

The WBTC smart contracts have been completed and successfully audited by several audit firms: Solidified Technologies, ChainSecurity and Coinspect. Some of the security recommendations have been incorporated into the latest version of the smart contracts. You can read up on the audit reports and view the WBTC smart contract in the Github repo.

First WBTC Minted

We have also minted and burnt the first WBTC on the main Ethereum chain which can be seen here:

Minting

1. The merchant sends the custodian (X + fee) BTC

2. Merchant waits for 6 confirmations of the BTC transaction

3. Merchant initiates a transaction* to authorize the custodian to mint X WBTC to the merchant’s address on the Ethereum chain.

4. Custodian calls confirm mint request to mint X new WBTC tokens on the Ethereum chain

* call the mintRequests function with a value of Y, where Y is the index of the mint request

Burning

1. The merchant creates a burn transaction, burning X WBTC tokens

2. Custodian waits for 25 block confirmations of the ETH transaction

3. Custodian releases (X — fee) BTC from cold storage to the merchants Bitcoin address

4. Custodian makes an Ethereum transaction marking the burn request as completed

Ecosystem

Inventory and Usage At Launch

We are thankful for the strong support shown by launch partners of the initiative. Various decentralized exchanges will have WBTC inventory from Day 1, to support liquidity for the token. Besides liquidity, multiple WBTC token pairs will also be available for trading. DDEX, IDEX, RadarRelay and Airswap are among the exchanges who have committed to supporting WBTC trading pairs at launch.

As important parts of the ecosystem, we are also working with centralized exchanges to support the initiative and list WBTC.

Besides exchanges, WBTC will also have immediate usage in financial DApps such as Compound and Dharma. Set Protocol will also support WBTC upon their main net launch in Q1 2019. Users will be able to borrow and lend, or create baskets of tokens containing WBTC.

Additional Launch Partners

We are pleased to welcome OmiseGO, dYdX, Loopring Protocol, GOPAX, bZx and TheOcean to the initiative.

GOPAX, Loopring, and TheOcean will be supporting WBTC pairs as well as participating in the DAO while OmiseGO will be participating as a DAO member. bZx will be supporting WBTC pairs. dYdX aims to support WBTC by having a leveraged long WBTC token and a short WBTC token.

This brings the total number of launch partners to 22, setting up the WBTC ecosystem for launch.

Kyber’s Preparation

Kyber is also making preparations to ensure that WBTC is well supported at launch:

We have developed the implementation of a new trading algorithm to support WBTC on the Kyber reserve. An initial inventory of WBTC tokens are being procured. WBTC will be listed on KyberSwap once it is released. WBTC will be able to be utilized on all DApps and wallets integrated with Kyber. For example, users of wallets such as imToken and Trust Wallet will be able to do token swaps with WBTC within the wallet. Etheremon monsters can be purchased using WBTC and WisePass users can pay for subscriptions with WBTC.

Governance

The Decentralized Autonomous Organisation (DAO) structure and workflow has been finalized and the DAO has been deployed. Most launch partners are confirmed members of the DAO. DAO members will ensure that the BTC balances of custodians match the amount of minted WBTC tokens. Otherwise, the WBTC token contract will be paused, with appropriate action taken. They will also be responsible for:

Adding or removing merchants and custodians in the network Changing DAO members or how the DAO works Pausing or resuming transfers on the token contract Changing logic to Mint or Burn tokens (if needed)

DAO members will hold the keys to a multisig wallet, which owns a set of smart contracts. These smart contracts control the minting and burning of the WBTC token, the pausing of the token, as well as the addition and removal of merchants and custodians. ‘M’ of ’N’ signatures will be required to send transactions from the multisig wallet where M and N will be determined once the launch partners are ascertained.

Summary

Overall, we are on track for a *mid-January launch and all of us are excited to see this go live. As a community effort, we’d love to have more builders join the collaboration. If you’re interested in participating, please reach out to us at [email protected]

Latest update: End January

Please contact Shane or BBY on telegram if you have questions.

Resources