gm everyone,

Welcome to the fifth edition of the Bitcoin Rollup. The Bitcoin rollup ecosystem seems to be picking up more steam heading into 2024, and we’re excited to cover some of the updates before year's end.

This will be the last edition of 2023. Let’s dive in.

Build on Bitcoin (BOB) releases public testnet

The Build on Bitcoin (BOB) team released their first public testnet of their zkVM rollup! The BOB rollup will ultimately settle on Ethereum, but their stack offers a lot of utility to BTC the asset. Users can test it out today by heading to this site.

But, if the rollup is on Ethereum Sepolia, how is it a Bitcoin rollup? The BOB team has an interesting design approach, and shared on a recent Twitter/X spaces how they plan to have their rollup be integrated with Bitcoin.

Congrats to the team! Exciting stuff ahead.

Chainway team holds internal hacker house

The Chainway team held an internal hacker house recently to explore integrating their zkEVM rollup with BitVM! They’re planning on being the first rollup integrated with BitVM and uses Bitcoin for data availability. Really exciting stuff!And, their internal testnet has multiple rollup nodes and a sequencer running on Bitcoin.

When rollups? Soon 👀

Messari’s Crypto Theses for 2024 features section on Bitcoin programmability

Red Sheehan, a research analyst at Messari, shared that Messari’s recent report features some analysis on the Bitcoin programmability space. In the report they cover rollups, sidechains, and more.

There might even be a small shoutout to Bitcoinrollups.io 🧡

Check it out!

Bison Labs launches BRC-20 token on a ZK-rollup

The Bison Labs team recently collaborated with BTC Startup Lab to launch a token ($LABB) on their zk-rollup. This is another live example from teams developing in the space showing how rollups can scale the Bitcoin network with off chain execution.

ICYMI, the Bison Labs team are developing a zk-rollup focused on streamlining BRC-20 trading.

This edition’s educational pieces

Comparing the Lightning Network, validia chains and validity rollups

John Light released a blog comparing the differences between the Lightning Network, validia chains, and validity rollups.A great read to dive into this holiday season.

Sequencers (Basically)

Ian Sagstetter released a blog post covering the “sequencer” role in rollup architecture, with some open questions around how Bitcoin rollups should think about sequencer design.

A quick read if you have a few minutes to spare.

Bob Bodily shares why miners should care about rollups

Bob Bodily joined Will Foxley on The Mining Pod to share what rollups are in plain english, and discuss why Bitcoin miners should care about recent developments in the L2 space.

A great listen for your travels on the road this week.

Some other articles, podcasts and tweets

Why BitVM matters to rollups

Alexei Zamyatin and Ian Sagstetter co-authored our new blog (and webpage) sharing why BitVM matters to Bitcoin rollups. Pretty technical (h/t Alexei), but worth a read!

Galaxy HQ shares technical development report for the Bitcoin ecosystem

The Galaxy research team shared a quick report highlighting recent developments around Ordinals, BitVM, proposed opcodes and more.

Zaki Manian shares his thoughts on Bitcoin’s long-term security budget

Zaki Manian (who is likely one of the most impactful people in the space) shared his thoughts on Bitcoin’s security budget in a Orb Land response. Tl;dr? Ordinals and rollups might help!

Some more tweets

• Yes, buying coffee with BTC will happen on L2s

• You can onboard new users to rollups without on-chain transactions

• Chainway shares how zk-proofs are verified on rollups

• Bitcoin Scaling with Rollups: Best Case Scenario

• A practical path to a hyper-bitcoinized world (not recent, but really good piece!)

• Demo on how BitVM works

• Twitter thread on how BitVM bridges might work

• Chainway shares introductory thread on BitVM

• Some commentary on CTV, BitVM and rollups

• Chainway CEO hypes us up with an update

• What if Bitcoin L2s decentralized their sequencers before Ethereum L2s did? 😂

• Some resources on privacy-preserving use cases for Bitcoin rollups

• Why rollups? We need solutions that work for users in high fee environments

• Good discussion on BitVM and rollups

• New development that leverages a fraud proof protocol that enables Bitcoin contracts 

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.