gm.

Welcome to the latest edition of the Bitcoin Rollup. There’s been a lot that’s gone on in the rollup space since the newsletter went out. It’s an exciting time to be a Bitcoiner.

Let’s dive straight in.

Taproot Wizards raises $7.5m seed round

Massive congratulations to the Taproot Wizards team for raising their seed round! The Ordinals project has driven a lot of attention back Bitcoin, and along the way they’ve shown an interest in developing zk-rollups to improve Bitcoin scaling.

They co-developed a zk-rollup with the Kasar Labs team, and Udi Wertheimer said that part of this fundraising round will be dedicated to moving that project forward.

Bison Labs launches Pipe Swap on testnet

The Bison Labs team added Pipe Swap on their latest testnet! They released a thread on how anyone with an Xverse wallet can get running on the testnet. We tried it out, and the workflow was super simple.

Bison Labs are building a zk-rollup focused on streamlining BRC-20 trading. Be sure to follow their Twitter/X account for updates on the project.

Congrats to the team!

Bioniq Market goes live

Not specifically a rollup, but the Bioniq Market ordinals marketplace has just gone live. Massive congratulations to the team!

Bioniq Market is built on the ICP Bitcoin sidechain, and they’re taking a different approach to the UX side of things. For example, you won’t need a browser extension wallet to use Bioniq. You can login directly with a Google account, and have access to a cross-chain wallet built directly into Bioniq.

The reason we’re including this news is because the CEO of Bioniq, Bob Bodily, is one of the top educators in the Bitcoin scaling space, and has released a lot of great content on rollups. This is a project to look out for as improvements to Bitcoin scaling are made.

Try out the marketplace here!

Are rollups… primed to go mainstream?

It’s crazy to think that 8 months ago, the people thinking about zk-rollups on Bitcoin were relatively small. Now, the space is making massive splashes in the Bitcoin space and broader cryptocurrency industry.

Chainway hosted their own event on scaling Bitcoin at Devconnect, and were also invited to speak at major Ethereum L2 conferences on their ZK-rollup. The Sovryn team spoke about scaling Bitcoin through rollups and zero-knowledge proofs at LaBitconf. And, B.O.B (Build on Bitcoin) were also featured on a panel at LaBitconf covering Bitcoin scaling.

Combine that with the Taproot Wizards raise and momentum BitVM is continuing to see, there’s a lot of optimism that we might get rollups on top of Bitcoin even sooner than some of us previously thought.

We’re obviously here for it 🙂

This edition’s educational pieces

Rollups (basically)

We’re releasing a series of blogs called “Rollups (basically)” that simply outline rollups in the context of Bitcoin. Check out the first post on the lifecycle of a Bitcoin rollup transaction!

Building on Bitcoin: a Comparison of Bitcoin Projects

The Hiro team released a blog outlining some of the nuances between Bitcoin scaling solutions. Their post contains content on rollups, sidechains and more. Peep it below 👇

Some other podcasts and tweets

BitVM chat on the Cartesi podcast

The Cartesi team released a short podcast with Carsten Munk on bringing a zk-verifier to Bitcoin through BitVM! Carsten has been cranking in this space for the last couple of months, and the short-form discussion is a great listen if you have 20 minutes free during lunch.

The future of Bitcoin?

Sometimes the shortest posts are the best. What a way to frame a potential future for Bitcoin.

“Bitcoin rollups fix this”

Bitcoin podcaster Peter McCormack released a tweet asking for updates on Bitcoin scaling developments. We felt this post on rollups highlighted why they might be the optimal solution, and

This is definitely a space to watch. The rollup teams developing on Bitcoin are getting closer to production, and after that, it’s going to get crazy.

Couple that with trust-minimized bridging via BitVM, the design space will be endless.

Some more tweets

• @rot13maxi joins Taproot Wizards as CTO. Congrats! 🎉

• Chainway shares why they build a zk-rollup over an optimistic rollup

• Something being lost in the Taproot Wizards raise

• Discussing the BitVM two-way peg, and more, on the Ordinals show

• Lots of progress in the BitVM ecosystem!

• Some calculations on Bitcoin fees related to rollups 👀

• Chainway highlights why they’re using the EVM

• Really awesome post covering “a deep dive on BitVM”

• The case for Bitcoin L2s 💸

• Spicy podcast on Bitcoin scaling, ZKPs and BitVM coming soon 🔥

• Zerosync’s talk from Bitcoin 2023, Amsterdam

• Carsten Munk’s slides from BitVM talk at zkWarsaw

• Why we need to bring L2beat to Bitcoin

• Bringing L2beat to Bitcoin

• Zerosync team broadcasts first mainnet transaction with Blake3 hashlock

• Bison Labs team outlines their design

• BitVM discussion with Guy Swann, Robin Linus and Super Testnet

• A weekly Bitcoin show with Bob Bodily good vibes ✌️

Jobs in the space

• Chainway - Senior Protocol Engineer. Experience in storage management, p2p networking, and/or protocol design is a plus.

• DevRel Lead - Build on Bitcoin (B.O.B). Ideal candidate has outstanding communication skills, can create technical demos yourself, and has a passion for pushing the boundaries of Bitcoin and EVM.

• Chainway - Business developer - Looking for a business developer based in Istanbul to support with partnership work.

• Taproot Wizards - Marketing Wizard - Seeking a marketing leader to help spread the message of the wizards far and wide. This role is ideal for a crypto native who gets bitcoin culture, with 3+ years in a startup digital marketing role.