In the world of blockchain, 'trust' is a core issue that is repeatedly deconstructed and reconstructed. The greatness of Bitcoin lies in its construction of a value transfer network that does not require trust in third parties through cryptography and consensus mechanisms. However, when attempting to build more complex applications on it, the trust issue resurfaces. Traditional cross-chain bridges mostly rely on multi-signatures or centralized custody, which somewhat deviates from Bitcoin's original intention. Bitlayer's core mission is to extend this 'minimal trust' concept from simple value transfer to the complex field of financial computation through a clever technical paradigm.
BitVM: The cornerstone of minimal trust
The technical cornerstone of Bitlayer is the BitVM (Bitcoin Virtual Machine) paradigm. Its core idea is not to truly run a virtual machine on Bitcoin but to use Bitcoin's existing scripting capabilities to build an optimistic, fraud-proof computation verification system. The essence of this system lies in its assumption of 'one honest participant'. It does not require all validators to be honest; rather, it assumes that as long as at least one of the observers is honest, the system's security can be guaranteed.
When users deposit BTC into the BitVM smart contract, the funds are locked. This process is transparent, and anyone can monitor it. If a malicious operator attempts to illegally transfer these funds, they must submit a transaction on the Bitcoin main chain. At this point, any honest observer can initiate a 'challenge' and prove on-chain that the transaction is fraudulent through a series of predefined, Bitcoin scripting-based logic gate calculations. Once proven successful, the fraudster's funds will be forfeited, while the user's assets remain intact. This design reduces the scope of trust from 'believing a small group of people won't do evil' to 'believing at least one person in the network will expose wrongdoing for their own benefit', greatly enhancing security.
ZK-Proof: A ladder to scalability
However, BitVM alone is not enough. To achieve high performance and low-cost complex computations on the second-layer network while ensuring that the final results can be 'understood' and verified by the Bitcoin main chain, Bitlayer introduces another cutting-edge technology: Zero-Knowledge Proofs (ZK-Proof).
As its co-founder Charlie Hu revealed in an interview at ETH Denver 2025, Bitlayer is actively exploring various ZK technology solutions including RISC Zero, SNARK, and STARK. ZK-Proof allows the second-layer network to execute thousands of complex transactions and smart contract computations off-chain, then generate a concise, cryptographic 'proof'. This proof can be submitted to the Bitcoin main chain (or verified through BitVM's mechanism) to demonstrate that all these off-chain computations are correct, without needing to re-execute each transaction.
This mode of 'off-chain computation, on-chain verification' is the golden standard for blockchain scalability. It liberates the Bitcoin main chain from heavy computational tasks, allowing it to focus solely on its core security and settlement functions. The application of ZK technology not only brings high TPS (transactions per second) and low gas fees to Bitlayer but, more importantly, guarantees the computational integrity of the second-layer network in a cryptographic manner, further solidifying its foundation of 'minimal trust'.
EVM Compatibility: A bridge for building a prosperous ecosystem
If BitVM and ZK-Proof solve the core issues of security and performance, then EVM (Ethereum Virtual Machine) compatibility is the key strategy for Bitlayer to ignite its ecosystem. The non-Turing completeness of the Bitcoin scripting language is the fundamental reason for its limited ecological development. In contrast, Ethereum's EVM has become the de facto standard for smart contract development, boasting the world's largest developer community and the most mature toolchain.
By achieving EVM compatibility, Bitlayer cleverly bypasses the enormous obstacle of rebuilding a development ecosystem on Bitcoin. This means that tens of thousands of Ethereum developers can seamlessly migrate their mature DeFi projects (such as Uniswap, Aave, Curve, etc.) to Bitlayer. They can use familiar tools like Solidity language, Truffle, Hardhat, etc., to quickly build and deploy applications. This significantly lowers the development threshold, rapidly bringing a rich variety of financial applications to the Bitcoin ecosystem, covering lending, trading, derivatives, and stablecoins, almost encompassing all areas of DeFi. This stands in stark contrast to the Lightning Network, which focuses on payment scenarios; while efficient, it cannot support complex financial logic.
In summary, Bitlayer's technical paradigm is a set of combined punches: using BitVM as a security foundation to solve the trust issue of cross-chain assets; using ZK-Proof as a scalability engine to achieve high performance and low cost; leveraging EVM compatibility as an ecological lever to activate the world's largest developer community. These three are interlinked and together build a powerful platform that inherits Bitcoin's extreme security while supporting modern complex financial applications, truly beginning to deconstruct the ancient art of 'trust'.
