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The Build on Bitcoin (BOB) project announced the launch of its first phase on Wednesday, enabling decentralized apps—dapps—to interact with the world’s top blockchain.
The BOB mainnet is coming online with $300 million in total value locked (TVL) and over 40 dapps already available, the team said on Twitter, declaring “a Bitcoin-driven DeFi summer” with more to come in the next three weeks.
Build on Bitcoin is intended to be a hybrid layer-2 network, an “Ethereum rollup” that merges Bitcoin’s global adoption, liquidity, and proof-of-work security with the decentralized finance (DeFi) features of Ethereum: smart contracts, wallets, and access to stablecoins.
In March, Bitcoin DeFi developer Sovryn used Build on Bitcoin to expand its offerings to the Ethereum ecosystem. BOB is meanwhile collaborating with Threshold’s tBTC and Wrapped BTC (WBTC).
“We currently work with the two leading BTC bridge providers while working on our bridge infrastructure in parallel,” BOB co-founder Alexei Zamyatin told Decrypt. “We built a one-click onramp from Bitcoin to BOB that abstracts bridge complexity and makes moving liquidity from BTC to BOB as easy as moving from ETH to an ETH L2 going live next week.”
Zamyatin said Build on Bitcoin is also looking to provide a one-stop shop for Bitcoin Ordinals and Runes, working with teams that provide bridges for Ordinals, Runes, and BRC-20 tokens.
Image: Build on Bitcoin
While Bitcoin DeFi is the goal, the BOB team acknowledged that the number one blockchain is not ready, making “bootstrapping” on Ethereum necessary.
Why Bootstrapping?
Despite the high demand, Bitcoin rollups aren’t ready yet. Our approach leverages Ethereum’s established infrastructure to:
• Enhance UX for #Ordinals, #Runes, & #BRC20s. • Make BTC deployment into DeFi super easy, for both Bitcoin & Ethereum users.
— BOB (Mainnet Live) (@build_on_bob) May 1, 2024
“Connecting to Ethereum follows a pragmatic rollout approach,” the team said. “Bitcoin rollups do not yet work, but demand is high: Bitcoin users need access to stablecoins and DeFi, Ethereum users want to use their BTC and get access to Ordinals, Runes and BRC-20s.”
“It is time to end the cult-like feuds and unite the two largest Web3 ecosystems to spearhead mass adoption together,” BOB declared.
According to Zamyatin, the next phase of BOB’s development will achieve Bitcoin proof of work via “merged mining,” enhancing security without disrupting Bitcoin mining. Merged mining refers to the process of mining two or more blockchains at the same time.
“Previous merged mining instances suffered from slow block times (30sec-1min) due to the limitations of Proof-of-Work,” he said.
Finally, the third planned phase will introduce BitVM, enabling a secure BTC bridge with fraud proofs similar to Ethereum’s bridges, BOB explains, ensuring safe BTC deposits enforced by Bitcoin nodes.
“This ensures that users bridging in BTC can be certain that their deposits are safe and security is enforced by all Bitcoin full nodes—as long as there is at least one person online to submit a fraud-proof,” he said, noting Arbitrum on Ethereum.
To draw more users to its platform, Zamyatin pointed to a BOB fusion program that the company is using to boost adoption through dapps that increase the TVL and number of users.
According to the Build on Bob website, the total value locked on the platform is currently over $279 million.
“BOB Fusion Season 1 attracted 300 million in TVL from 33,000 users in 4 weeks,” Zamyatin said. “BOB Season 2 that launched today saw $64 million in on-chain TVL inflow in less than 12 hours.”
“Our mission is to make BTC deployment into DeFi super easy,” Zamyatin said. “Think Yearn Finance for Bitcoin, and make Bitcoin assets accessible to Ethereum and EVM users—uniting the two largest web3 power-user ecosystems.”
Edited by Ryan Ozawa.
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