BitVM enables a free market of second layers, potentially scaling Bitcoin to billions of users.
BitVM is a computing paradigm to express Turing-complete Bitcoin contracts. This requires no changes to the network’s consensus rules. Rather than executing computations on Bitcoin, they are merely verified, similarly to optimistic rollups. A prover makes a claim that a given function evaluates for some particular inputs to some specific output. If that claim is false, anyone can perform a fraud proof and punish the prover. Using this mechanism, any computable function can be verified on Bitcoin.
BitVM is the foundational element to bridge BTC to second layers such as sidechains, rollups, and zkCoins.
The BitVM project is lead by its inventor, Robin Linus, together with Lukas George and Stillsaiko. Special thanks to Super Testnet, Carsten Munk, Hakan Karakuş, Weikeng Chen, and Steven Roose for their code contributions. We’re also collaborating in research projects together with Liam Eagen, Alexei Zamyatin, as well as Matteo Maffai’s group at TU Vienna, and David Tse’s group at Stanford.
BitVM is developed as free and open source software under the umbrella of the ZeroSync nonprofit organization. It is funded by research grants from Spiral, Starkware, OpenSats, and community contributions.