Bitlayer secures 31.5% of Bitcoin's hashrate to bring smart contracts to BTC

Bitlayer’s Bitcoin smart-contract strategy is being implemented by mining pools down 31.5% of the network’s hashrate, a improvement that volition assistance guarantee that its strategy volition run connected the Bitcoin blockchain, the institution said.

According to a May 27 announcement shared with Cointelegraph, Bitlayer’s BitVM implementation volition beryllium supported by large Bitcoin (BTC) mining pools including Antpool, F2Pool, and SpiderPool. Antpool CEO Andy Chow said:

"Antpool has go the span relation for Bitlayer to enactment Bitcoin innovation and support miners’ interests.”

BitVM (Bitcoin Virtual Machine) is simply a model that enables analyzable smart contracts to beryllium deployed connected the Bitcoin blockchain without changing the basal protocol. The thought was introduced by Robin Linux successful 2023, and allows for the analyzable computation progressive successful astute declaration systems to beryllium verified onchain and executed offchain successful a mode resembling optimistic rollups.

Related: Here’s however Bitcoin is transforming into Web3’s backbone

A BitVM implementation

Bitlayer is simply a BitVM implementation, aiming to let Bitcoin to travel done decentralized concern (DeFi) systems and layer-2 networks. According to Chow, the implementation mightiness pb to heightened enactment successful Bitcoin’s web and make gross for miners:

“This enlargement of Bitcoin’s usage cases volition thrust much web activity, generating further transaction fees and gross opportunities for miners. As artifact rewards alteration implicit time, increasing interest markets are captious for miners’ sustainable income.“

Mining pools specified arsenic Chow’s Antpool play a captious relation successful the adoption of BitVM implementations due to the fact that they straight find the inclusion and validation of caller types of transactions and scripts astatine the statement layer.

BitVM requires miners to see customized Taproot-based transactions that encode interactive verification logic. Mining pools indispensable hold to see these non-standard oregon computationally intensive scripts successful blocks, different the protocol would simply not function.

Related: StarkWare researchers suggest astute contracts for Bitcoin with ColliderVM

Mining excavation support

According to Hashrate Index data, Antpool controls 17.2% of Bitcoin’s hashrate arsenic of May 26, portion F2Pool controls 8.2% and Spiderpool 6.1%. This results successful a full supporting hashrate of 31.5%.

Bitcoin hashrate organisation betwixt mining pools. Source: Hash Rate Index

This is capable to unafraid transaction inclusion successful nether 1 successful each 3 blocks. This is presumably capable for testing, prototyping and early-stage applications.

With this percent of supporting hashrate, developers tin physique functional systems with the presumption that, contempt immoderate latency, BitVM transactions volition beryllium processed. So portion it is hard to presumption this hashrate arsenic allowing a afloat functional deployment, it is apt capable for the aboriginal phases of BitVM development.

A Bitlayer typical told Cointelegraph that “should corporate hashrate enactment weaken oregon argumentation shifts hap wrong Bitcoin Core, we person a multi-layered contingency plan.” This program includes the “expanded mining excavation partnerships,” referring to the company’s volition to support onboarding much mining pools.

Magazine: ZK-proofs are bringing astute contracts to Bitcoin — BitcoinOS and Starknet