[Resource Topic] 2025/1158: Bridging Bitcoin to Second Layers via BitVM2

Welcome to the resource topic for 2025/1158

Title:
Bridging Bitcoin to Second Layers via BitVM2

Authors: Robin Linus, Lukas Aumayr, Zeta Avarikioti, Matteo Maffei, Andrea Pelosi, Orfeas Thyfronitis Litos, Christos Stefo, David Tse, Alexei Zamyatin

Abstract:

A holy grail in blockchain infrastructure is a trustless bridge between Bitcoin and its second layers or other chains. We make progress toward this vision by introducing the first light-client based Bitcoin bridge. At the heart of its design lies BitVM2-core, a novel paradigm that enables arbitrary program execution on Bitcoin, combining Turing-complete expressiveness with the security of Bitcoin consensus. BitVM2-bridge advances prior approaches by reducing the trust assumption from an honest majority (t-of-n) to existential honesty (1-of-n) during setup. Liveness is guaranteed with only one rational operator, and any user can act as a challenger, enabling permissionless verification. A production-level implementation of BitVM2 has been developed and a full challenge verification has been executed on the Bitcoin mainnet.

ePrint: https://eprint.iacr.org/2025/1158

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