A Bitcoin developer named Robin Linus has come up with a new method to allow more complex off-chain smart contracts on the Bitcoin network without requiring a soft fork.
In a white paper released on October 9, titled “BitVM: Compute Anything on Bitcoin,” Robin Linus, the project lead at ZeroSync, introduced a system called BitVM. BitVM allows for the creation of Bitcoin contracts that are capable of performing Turing-complete computations, all without making any changes to Bitcoin’s fundamental consensus rules.
A Turing complete system is one that can, in theory, solve any computational problem. BitVM is a technology designed for Bitcoin contracts, where the contract’s logic runs off the Bitcoin network but gets verified on Bitcoin, somewhat similar to how Ethereum’s optimistic rollups work.
BitVM uses a structure based on fraud proofs and a challenge-response model. In this setup, a “prover” makes claims, and a “verifier” checks those claims using fraud-proof mechanisms to penalize the power if false claims are detected.
Linus, the person behind BitVM, explained that Bitcoin, in its current state, can only handle basic operations like signatures, timelocks, and hashlocks. However, with BitVM, it becomes possible to perform a wide range of interesting applications on the Bitcoin network.
Linus mentioned that there are certain limitations to the model. It primarily works in a scenario involving two parties, one prover and the other verifier. Additionally, to execute programs, a substantial amount of computation and communication off the main network is required.
Linus also talked about their upcoming goals. They aim to fully implement BitVM, which is made possible by the Taproot soft fork that occurred in November 2021. Alongside this, they are working on Tree++, a high-level programming language for creating and debugging Bitcoin contracts.
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