Babylon Labs, the developer of the largest BTC staking protocol, is building a trust-minimized Bitcoin bridge with the Cosmos network to enhance the interoperability of the world’s oldest blockchain.
In collaboration with Bitcoin developers Fiamma, Babylon uses the BitVM2 computing paradigm, designed to allow Ethereum-style smart contracts in Bitcoin, which then paves the way for zero-knowledge technology.
Zero-knowledge computations allow different parties to verify that information is accurate without actually revealing to each other what the information is. In this sense, it is foundational to bridging digital assets between different blockchains.
Developers such as Babylon Labs and Fiamma aim to unlock the deep wells of value stored in BTC to finance other ecosystems and allow them to run on blockchains without some of the speed and scale limitations. of Bitcoin.
This is part of a broader movement to extract greater utility from Bitcoin, similar to what is common with networks like Ethereum. Babylon’s Bitcoin staking protocol, which is one of the main projects in this sector, is billed as a way of using BTC to secure other protocols and decentralized applications and has a total value locked (TVL) of approximately $5.5 billion.
The introduction of BitVM2’s predecessor Robin Linus in October 2023 was hailed as a breakthrough for making Bitcoin more programmableby enabling rollup that can handle faster and cheaper transactions without compromising security. This can allow bridges to securely transfer BTC to the rollup, and later return BTC to withdraw deposits.
BitVM has inspired a lot of enthusiasm among developers building Bitcoin projects, including some dedicated to bridging other networks. Zero-knowledge rollup Citrea, supported by Galaxy Digital, deployed a BitVM-based bridge to the Bitcoin testnet in September. It is designed to be compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), the smart-contracts-executing software that powers the Ethereum protocol.
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