Trustless Bitcoin Vaults for Collateral-Based Applications
A new paper proposes Trustless Bitcoin Vaults, a primitive for collateral-based applications in which the depositor or known counterparties can withdraw BTC without trusting a third party. It notes that all bridges to date, including state-of-the-art BitVM bridges, rely on trust in a committee or centralized party, and it instantiates the primitive for a lending application.
eprint.iacr.org
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Trustless Bitcoin Vaults
Bitcoin (BTC) is the largest crypto asset, yet the Bitcoin blockchain offers few applications in which BTC can be used. A standard approach to make BTC useful is bridging: BTC is deposited on the Bitcoin chain and a wrapped asset is minted on a chain such as Ethereum, where it can be used in smart contract applications. Unfortunately, all Bitcoin bridges to date require trust assumptions on a centralized party or a committee running the bridge to enable withdrawals of the deposited BTC, including state-of-the-art BitVM bridges.
eprint.iacr.org
🔗
Trustless Bitcoin Vaults
Bitcoin (BTC) is the largest crypto asset, yet the Bitcoin blockchain offers few applications in which BTC can be used. A standard approach to make BTC useful is bridging: BTC is deposited on the Bitcoin chain and a wrapped asset is minted on a chain such as Ethereum, where it can be used in smart contract applications. Unfortunately, all Bitcoin bridges to date require trust assumptions on a centralized party or a committee running the bridge to enable withdrawals of the deposited BTC, including state-of-the-art BitVM bridges.