gm everyone,

Welcome to the sixth edition of the Bitcoin Rollup. It’s been a crazy first few weeks of 2024, and it looks like we might get rollup-like L2s this year.

If we stay at this pace, it’s going to be a crazy year. Let’s dive in.

Chainway announces they’re close to a zk-verifier in BitVM

The tweet below says it all. Chainway Labs may have figured out how to build a zk-verifier into Bitcoin without the need for a soft fork. A few days later, their CEO commented that we’ll have a public testnet ready before October of this year. This is wild. We might actually get rollups in 2024.

Cartesi Project may build on Bitcoin

Cartesi Project’s Carsten Munk has been an active contributor to BitVM development in the last few months. Given the progress made around the broader community’s efforts, he published a forum post thinking about how Cartesi Project could deploy rollups on Bitcoin.Cartesi enables developers to build optimistic rollups with a Linux-based virtual machine…  Imagine Doom on Bitcoin…

Sneak peak of how a trust-minimized BitVM bridge will work

Alexei Zamyatin, co-founder of BOB, wrote a short blurb on how trust-minimized bridges for BitVM would work. In the post, he outlines the structure and trust-assumptions users would take on when interacting with the bridge.

Does the enable full-fledged rollups as we know them in Ethereum? Probably not. But, the fact that we’re even having these conversations in 2024 is absolutely wild.

gg everyone.

This edition’s educational pieces

Chainway releases some threads on OP_CAT and BitVM

Chainway Labs is also a great account to follow for educational content around Bitcoin scaling. They’ve recently penned a few threads on OP_CAT, its history and how it might help BitVM.While BitVM doesn’t need a soft fork, enabling covenants might help.

The Chainway team is working on content to help the broader community understand the implications for these upgrades.

Zcash-style privacy on Bitcoin?

A big improvement rollups could bring to Bitcoin is enabling Zcash-style privacy. In a recent post, we covered how this is possible and we also showed a demo of a Zcash-style transaction on an Ethereum rollup today.

Quantam Cats drops and releases BIP Land

The Taproot Wizards dropped a new project Quantam Cats that pays homage to the OP_CAT opcode. In the drop, they released a great explainer on the history of OP_CAT and the process of getting a BIP activated on Bitcoin. Super fun website, and candidly, a marketing masterclass from the Taproot Wizards team.

Want a cat? Check out the post below.

Some other articles, podcasts and tweets

Bitcoin Takeover talks ZKPs, BitVM and L2 scaling

The Bitcoin Takeover podcast had Alexei Zamyatin, Super Testnet and John Light on to discuss a number of topics related to BitVM, ZKPs and L2 scaling on Bitcoin.

Spaces on “Upgrading Bitcoin” with Bitcoin Magazine and Taproot Wizards

The Taproot Wizards team joined a spaces with Bitcoin Magazine and discussed past Bitcoin upgrades, and what the future of the protocol looks like.

Activating rollups on Bitcoin

Edan Yago from Sovryn gave a great talk on rollups at LaBitConf. The talk ties the technology back to the mission of Bitcoin - breaking free from the banks!

Some more tweets

• ZeroSync’s 2023 year in review

• How much can rollups actually scale Bitcoin? 👀

• Chainway’s 2024 plans 🔥

• Good thread on the history of ZKPs, and Starkware, on Bitcoin

• Robin Linus joins Brink engineers to discuss BitVM 

• Starknet may be coming to Bitcoin 🤯

• After looking at the data, you can see Bitcoin needs better sidechains and rollups

• Someone verified a circom zk-proof on Bitcoin

• Come write a blog for the BitcoinRollups.io site ✍️

• Robin Linus discusses BitVM and ZKPs on Hashing it Out

• Rollups are coming, but be aware of marketing hype

• Explaining BitVM in one tweet

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.

• Chainway - Marketing Intern. Chainway is looking for a marketing intern based in the Istanbul area.

• 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.

• Senior Marketing Specialist - Build on Bitcoin (B.O.B). BOB is looking for a senior marketing professional to come help make Bitcoin cool again.