GOAT Network, the only BTC Layer 2 with a DSEQ Network. Revenues shared with the community. Bringing BTC to an EVM environment.
Intro
Bitcoin infrastructure is going to scale over the next ten years. Bitcoin has had many troubling moments, civil wars, cex failure, government bans, continuous incredulity from the mainstream normie world.
And yet it has survived and it has smashed past the doubt to the point BlackRock is telling the world how great Bitcoin is as an asset to hold in your portfolio.
The next era of Bitcoin is going to be a continuation of scaling the infrastructure around it. David Marcus is pushing Lightspark to unify payment rails with Bitcoin at the centre. He attempted to get Libra off the ground but that project wanted to utilise the USD as its base for a Libra token.
However, the USD has central authority. He has learnt his lesson, instead, move to a decentralised currency and that is Bitcoin.
Goat Network is going to scale Bitcoin and unify liquidity in crypto whilst keeping it decentralised.
Tech
Rather than a sequencer of a rollup be owned by a single entity, Goat decentralises this and makes a decentralised sequencer (DSeq) network.
Goat Network helps people make Bitcoin on their Bitcoin, it also helps entrepreneurs enter the Bitcoin environment and grow out the Bitcoin-based economy.
Bitcoin is the base and this provides Goat its security. Goat is a ZK-Rollup on top of Bitcoin and the DSeq network batches transactions. The proof network generates validity proofs and then the Optimistic Challenge Protocol (GOAT-OCP) verifies the proofs on Bitcoin.
The ZKM infrastructure can connect multiple Layer 1s. If a rollup on Bitcoin has ZKM tech, it is interoperable with every BTC rollup, the same applies to a rollup on Ethereum has ZKM tech. What is an extra remarkable step is the ZKM rollup on Bitcoin and Ethereum are compatible with one another.
This means ZKM tech is able to unify native liquidity and this is referred to as the Entangled Rollup.
Bitcoin security
GOAT-OCP on BitVM2
DSeq Network
Entangled Rollup to connect the L1 ecosystems.
With the Entangled Rollup, less bridges are required. Less infrastructure needed means capital-safety and capital-efficiency. The DSeq network then generates more rewards, which go into the community. This provides a positive flywheel effects – more users, more DSeq rewards, more community rewards, more user interaction.
Bitcoin on Goat
Let’s say Person A has bitcoin is on the Bitcoin Network.
When they bridge it to Goat Network the BTC is stored in a federation pool on the Bitcoin network. The DSeq nodes mint gBTC on the Goat Network representing the bridged BTC. gBTC is fully collateralised by BTC, 1:1.
gBTC is a gas token and can be utilised, for example you can stake it in a DSeq node and get yBTC – a yield bearing token.
From there you can then put the yBTC into a Decomposition Pool.
The pool then mints yToken and pBTC. The pBTC is a Principal Token, this represents the gBTC. The yToken represents the rewarded tokens from the yield
For the visual learners, here are some charts to demonstrate the flow.
Here is some more detail. Artemis and Shoebill Finance are partners of Goat Network, these protocols are on Metis. With the combination of Artemis and Shoebill on Metis, a participant could really supercharge their yield returns on their Metis tokens, I will translate the possibility to Goat Network.
Before I break it down, so you are aware, Artemis is a liquid staking protocol tailored for DSeq pools.
Shoebill Finance lending protocol that leverages LSTs.
Right, so after Person B bridges BTC to Goat Network, they get their gBTC just like Person A.
Person B can then deposit gBTC into Artemis, who stake gBTC in sequencers and hold pBTC. Artemis will then mint artBTC for Person B.
Now that Person B holds artBTC, they can then go to Shoebill Finance and provide artBTC and receive a healthy APY on that as this artBTC is lent to other users. OR. Big or. They can leverage their artBTC on Shoebill, borrow gBTC, deposit that gBTC into Artemis to get more artBTC to lend.
This is not financial advice, just something Person B can do, this is what people did with Metis.
There is another token, the governance token of Goat Network, can you take a guess at what its called?
GOAT Token. Yeeeeeeeeeees, very good.
The full details of this tokens utility has not been divulged. What I have gathered from some interviews is if GOAT also staked, it can help boost rewards, for example if you lock GOAT it serves as a multiplier for your yBTC.
There is a Goats Points campaign, peoples interactions as well as the transactions on projects registered with this, for example Goat Launcher, will amount to points. Goat Points are then converted into Goat Tokens. You can read little more into that here - medium.com/@ganeshreddysg143/the-launch-of-goat-network-a-new-era-in-decentralized-networking-d0dcd4531fd3
The profits generated by sequencers are distributed to users through yBTC. The profits mainly come from gas fees and GOAT tokens, therefore, as transaction volume increases, the sequencers receive higher profits, which are distributed to yield tokens. There is a compounding profit as the network grows and flourishes.
Here is the tokenomics from the Goat Network Beige Paper:
In a world where mining is getting more costly to maintain and Bitcoin in dollar terms is rising each cycle, putting the Bitcoin you have to work is a great way to accumulate Bitcoin.
And it is not just Bitcoin you can put to use, Doge Coin also!
Doge holders can stake their beloved coins and get rewarded in Bitcoin.
Doge coin started at the end of 2013 to provide a less serious side of crypto whilst Bitcoin was taking down the status quo. Since then, Doge coin has made millionaires, been on race cars, supported by Elon and it has made it to the Whitehouse.
Now, you can stake it can get BTC yield.
What a time to be alive.
GOAT Team
Goat Network will be the basis of BTCFI and it can bring BTC into an Ethereum environment. As the network matures, as the devs build, we will see interesting dapps arise because you will be able to utilise BTC as collateral on Ethereum without wrapping it.
First, I will speak on the Goat Network team.
Co-founder of Metis Kevin Liu co-founded Goat Network with Stephen Duan. Duan founded Baidu Blockchain, Baidu is a massive search engine in China. They launched their own blockchain, the expertise and resources from here saw Duan launch Eigen Network.
Eigen Network is a privacy-focused blockchain solution aimed at providing scalable, secure, and private blockchain infrastructure. They partner with ZK Pass, Arbitrum, Metis and Polygon. The team behind Eigen Network come from Australia and China and graduatingfrom Peking University, Tsinghua University, Beihang University, and Swinburne University of Technology.
Annie Zhao was head of development at zkPass, she brings her experience in Citi Global Asia Markets and in crypto to Goat for the Growth department.
Metis has strong roots in Toronto – I have piece written on Metis, it delves into the role of Toronto https://mirror.xyz/pcybe.eth/4IJTMcvAULH3kO-tvpQ3tqHbeRBugwKlGveYqOYmseo - and Goat Network has this influence also.
As seen with the involvement of Dr. Eric Wang (Jian Wang), who has a rich history in finance, being a quant, holding analyst and consultancy roles in various Toronto based firms, notably Scotia Bank. He is reportedly a co-founder of the world’s first diversified cryptocurrency index, BB Index. - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jian-wang-03454114/details/experience/
Dr. Redouane Elkamhi is the Professor of Finance at University of Toronto, he can boast roles as advisor to KPMG and Ernst & Young, and now he holds role of the economist of GOAT Network and wrote the Goat Network Beige Paper - https://drive.google.com/file/d/18myTJe1ZPM2Pw5MB1ZB6DCC7026_IJyp/view / https://discover.research.utoronto.ca/24652-redouane-elkamhi
Dylan Kawalec put it all on the line by betting on Bitcoin and it changed his life for the better. He has worked at Tesla, Harmony, freelanced in Ethereum circles, provided Smart Contract consultation for several projects across various platforms, including Harmony Protocol, Polygon, Findora, Skale Labs, Ethereum, and Boba Network. Worked with Binance, Osmosis, and is now the Head of Dev Rel at Goat Network - https://www.linkedin.com/in/dylankawalec/details/experience/
Dane Great leads the strategy team, while Brett Wags has led DeFi teams for major Web3 projects, playing a crucial role in GOAT Network's development and outreach.
The Marketing Lead has a wealth of experience. Mario F. Pazos has worked at Citi as Vice President, he held the Snr VP at Mastercard. Mario has also worked at Microsoft as well as be the Snr Marketing Manager at Sony. On the investment side of matters, Mario has Moana Capital and is the co-founder of the Security Token Group.
The back-end of Goat is from the ZKM team, you will recognise some faces there.
ZKM Team
KEVIN LIU! STEPHEN DUAN! Fancy seeing you here. Aforementioned, Duan’s experience with Eigen Network and their partnership with Metis, it seems a natural progression when Metis incubated ZKM that Duan would be involved.
Other Metisans can be seen involved with the team. Elena, Andrei and Pavel Sinelnikova, as well as Metis Chief Scientist Ming Guo, who work MIPS architecture and this knowledge is particularly useful for what ZKM produced.
Professor Jeroen van de Graaf is a lead researcher, for the cypherpunks among you, David Chaum went to live in the Netherlands and ended up working with Jeroen on crypto research - https://dl.acm.org/profile/81100170844
Plus Lucas Fraga, a young Brazilian researcher works with the team, researching and improving upon ZK techniques. JoĂŁo Moreno FalcĂŁo is another Brazilian popping up in ZKM, he co-founded Zeta Transparent Cryptography, worked at Intelliway, one of largest IT solutions companies in Latin America, and now he is a researcher with ZKM.
Angell Li is another developer a part of ZKM and Alice Liu pushes the education and presentations of ZKM.
With Ming’s experience in MIPS and the teams dedication to ZK tech, ZKM came up with zkMIPS. This is the foundation to the Entangled Rollup mentioned earlier.
This is an ingenious method, MIPS is an instruction set that is low-computation and can scale. By applying ZK techniques to this layer, this approach allows for the unification of different virtual machines (VMs) and programming languages under a single zero-knowledge proof system, facilitating seamless integration with existing applications without requiring significant code modifications.
Metis will be integrating this tech making Metis a hybrid rollup, combining the best of both optimistic and zk-rollups. Optimistic rollups have withdrawals that can take days and ZK-rollups need stable states, zkMIPS provides the stable state, the privacy and cuts down the withdrawal times.
If a Bitcoin rollup has zkVM tech and an Ethereum rollup has zkVM tech that enables both ecosystems to be interoperable with one another.
I write this at the beginning of 2025, Metis still needs to integrate this tech but once it does, that means GOAT and Metis can bring Bitcoin and Ethereum together. Bitcoin will be able to flourish in an Ethereum environment.
And the longer-term vision, Goat Network will be able to unify the liquid across multiple chains.
If you are interested, here is Jeroen delving into cross-chain liquidity without a bridge, in two parts:
Conclusion
With Bitcoin's limited programming capabilities it has been a task to unlock the potential of Bitcoin. Goat Network is opening up sustainable yield for Bitcoin and bringing it to an Ethereum environment, which can provide lending, synthetic assets, derivatives, asset trading, staking, and restaking.
By utilising a DSeq network, it can ensure decentralisation, cut out bloated architecture and provide more revenue and rewards to the system and participants.
GOAT Network isn't just scaling Bitcoin—it's pioneering a "Universal Layer 2" integrating Bitcoin, Ethereum, TON, Cosmos, and more, ensuring native security without third-party bridges.
The more activity, the higher the rewards. By scaling the most significant currency in crypto and connecting the various ecosystems GOAT can unify the blockchain space.
