[Resource Topic] 2025/776: Clementine: A Collateral-Efficient, Trust-Minimized, and Scalable Bitcoin Bridge

Welcome to the resource topic for 2025/776

Title:
Clementine: A Collateral-Efficient, Trust-Minimized, and Scalable Bitcoin Bridge

Authors: Ekrem Bal, Lukas Aumayr, Atacan İyidoğan, Giulia Scaffino, Hakan Karakuş, Cengiz Eray Aslan, Orfeas Stefanos Thyfronitis Litos

Abstract:

This whitepaper introduces Clementine, a secure, collateral-efficient, trust-minimized, and scalable Bitcoin bridge based on BitVM2 that enables withdrawals from rollups or other side systems to Bitcoin. Clementine proposes a new Bitcoin light client that remains secure against adversaries controlling less than 50% of Bitcoin’s hash rate, assuming at least one honest Watchtower in a permissioned set. The protocol is collateral-efficient, reusing locked funds over time and reducing unnecessary dust outputs through the strategic use of 0-value outputs, and scalable, enabling a single challenge per Operator to slash multiple misbehaviors. This increases throughput and reduces on-chain load without compromising security. Clementine enables trust-minimized and efficient peg-outs from Citrea to Bitcoin, making zk-rollups on Bitcoin practical and unlocking new paths for native scalability and interoperability.

ePrint: https://eprint.iacr.org/2025/776

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