On November 13, Singapore time, the Bitcoin Next Summit, hosted by Bitlayer, a Bitcoin native Layer 2 project based on Bitcoin finality, successfully concluded at the IMPACT Exhibition Center in Bangkok, Thailand. The summit brought together numerous leading Bitcoin ecosystem builders and industry leaders, including Eli Ben-Sasson, co-founder and CEO of StarkWare, Ken Liao, founder and CEO of Xverse, and Matt, founder and CEO of Lorenzo Protocol, along with Bitlayer's two co-founders, Kevin He and Charlie Hu, among over twenty practitioners who shared their profound insights on the cutting edge of Bitcoin technology and the next upgrade, while also delving into the current landscape and development trends of BTCFi.
As the highest specification, most influential, and most in-depth Bitcoin ecosystem summit in Southeast Asia recently, the Bitcoin Next Summit attracted over 2,000 users to register and participate. During the event, five in-depth roundtable discussions were held. The first two roundtables focused on the next upgrade of Bitcoin, where participants discussed popular community topics, key challenges, solutions, and impacts regarding Bitcoin upgrades; the last three roundtables focused on the hot narrative of BTCFi, where guests believed that BTCFi, which has grown from the underlying Bitcoin ecosystem, has the potential to unlock billions of dollars in financialization value of native BTC, becoming the next growth engine of the crypto economy.
With technological innovation and a thriving on-chain ecosystem, Bitlayer is becoming a leading project in the Bitcoin native Layer 2 track, playing an important role in promoting the Bitcoin financial ecosystem. Through this Bitcoin Next Summit, Bitlayer showcased its open and cutting-edge stance, injecting more possibilities into leading the future development of Bitcoin Layer 2.
The Next Upgrade of Bitcoin: Current Challenges and Solutions
At the beginning of the conference, Kevin He, co-founder of Bitlayer, delivered a speech titled "A Brief Report on the Next Upgrade of Bitcoin for Non-Professionals." He introduced the differences and characteristics of Bitcoin forks, soft forks, and hard forks from multiple dimensions, as well as the influence of stakeholders and the community. Kevin He pointed out that soft forks are seen as a more ideal upgrade path because they can avoid the network split risks that hard forks may cause, while maintaining the stability and trust of the network. A successful soft fork must find the right balance between the scale of changes, potential value and risks, and the timing of implementation, while also considering the incentives and powers of different stakeholders.
He also mentioned that different stakeholder groups, including protocol developers, investors, users, and miners, each have different motivations and influences that collectively affect the decision-making of Bitcoin upgrades. He further stated, "Any changes to the network should adhere to the core values of Bitcoin," and should be implemented cautiously under a more refined governance mechanism and at an appropriate time.
Subsequently, Eli Ben-Sasson, co-founder and CEO of StarkWare, delivered a speech titled "Starknet: Building the Safest Bitcoin Layer 2 Network." He stated that StarkWare is at the forefront in multiple fields, including Cairo, Stwo (STARK Two), and Bitcoin research. StarkWare has launched the Stwo validator supporting OPCAT on the Bitcoin testnet and has established a research fund of $1 million specifically for OPCAT research. Additionally, Eli Ben-Sasson emphasized that Stwo is a key advancement, featuring M31 field, GKR lookup, Mixed degree, and an improved Cairo VM, which is expected to go live on the mainnet in Q1 2025.
The first roundtable discussion of the conference was titled "Why the Next Upgrade of Bitcoin is Important: Key Challenges and Solutions," hosted by Josh K, founder of Edge of Bitcoin. He invited Kevin He, co-founder of Bitlayer, Ken Liao, founder and CEO of Xverse, Jeffrey Hu, head of research at HashKey Capital, Wang Yiqiang, co-founder and CTO of sCrypt, and Scott Odell from [[alloc] init] as discussion guests.
Among them, Jeffrey Hu, head of research at HashKey Capital, pointed out that some people believe Bitcoin is no longer being updated, but in fact, Bitcoin has introduced new signature algorithms in the past and continues to introduce new cryptographic primitives. Some new proposals aim to enhance Bitcoin's performance and security, and the community may actively promote the progress of such proposals.
Wang Yiqiang, co-founder and CTO of sCrypt, believes that some Bitcoin opcodes are disabled due to security concerns, and their current performance cannot support more ecological innovations. Therefore, whether to enable certain opcodes (such as OP_CAT) to achieve more functionality has become a hot topic in the community. If these proposals are ultimately approved, they will bring more innovations to the Bitcoin ecosystem, such as BTCFi and cross-chain interoperability.
Ken Liao, founder and CEO of Xverse, pointed out that there is significant room for improvement in the current Bitcoin wallet ecosystem. For example, as the Bitcoin layer is implemented on the mainnet, providing a seamless unified experience across multiple Bitcoin Layer 2 networks will be crucial. We have the opportunity to improve the fragmentation issue of Ethereum Layer 2 experiences.
Scott Odell, a member of [[alloc] init] and co-founder of the first protocol built using Bitcoin PIPEs, believes that the industry will soon be surprised by the actual opportunities brought by Bitcoin protocol upgrades, which do not need to be achieved through soft forks. New cryptographic technologies like Bitcoin PIPEs (see @nemothenoone's white paper) open up a new domain that can natively support covenants and ZKPs on Bitcoin by simulating missing opcodes, such as OP_CAT and CTV. This will give rise to a new class of Bitcoin native applications and enhance Bitcoin's functionality and programmability, allowing various protocols to ultimately align and integrate fully with Bitcoin L1.
The second roundtable discussion of the conference was titled "From OPCAT to OPCTV: What Will the Next Upgrade of Bitcoin Bring?" Kevin He served as the roundtable host, inviting Ben77, founder of discoco labs, Weikeng Chen, research partner at L2IV, and Yovela, co-founder of Fiamma, as roundtable discussion guests.
Among them, Ben77, founder of discoco labs, emphasized that improvements in Bitcoin's security and user experience are crucial. He believes that the biggest obstacle to Bitcoin's development is speed and cost, and enhancing user experience requires achieving faster and cheaper transactions.
Yovela, co-founder of Fiamma, shared that her team is about to launch the world's first ZK verification layer powered by BitVM2 and secured by Bitcoin. This groundbreaking technology includes the first functional Groth16 and Fflonk verifiers for Bitcoin and the first complete BitVM2 penalty mechanism, all of which were completed in August. Fiamma is developing a trustless Bitcoin bridge technology that connects BTC L2s, ETH L2s, and major L1s, and plans to expand the application of BitVM in the future, including non-bridged interoperability and BRC20 zkindexers. This development will make Bitcoin an indispensable dynamic asset in the future internet and financial systems, applicable to all ecosystems, DApps, and real-world scenarios such as daily payments.
BTCFi: Unlocking a Trillion Dollar Bitcoin Economy
BTCFi is undoubtedly one of the hottest topics currently, marking the expansion of the concept and application of decentralized finance (DeFi) to the Bitcoin network, with the potential to unlock a crypto financial market worth trillions of dollars.
At the Bitcoin Next Summit, Charlie Hu, co-founder of Bitlayer, delivered a speech titled "Unlocking the DeFi Potential of the Safest Blockchain." He deeply explored the potential of Bitcoin's new frontiers and Bitlayer's ecological construction. Charlie Hu pointed out that Bitcoin is seen as a global financial bridge connecting institutions and retail investors, as well as the East and West. With the increasing popularity and acceptance of Bitcoin, it is becoming an important medium for global financial communication, promoting the integration of different markets and cultures. He believes that the entire market is undergoing a transition from an institutional bull market to an on-chain retail bull market, and DeFi 2.0 will unfold within the Bitcoin ecosystem.
Charlie Hu shared with the participants the methodology of Bitlayer's ecological construction. Bitlayer's ecological construction methodology integrates the essence of years of experience accumulated in the Ethereum ecosystem with the fundamental principles of the Bitcoin ecosystem. Specifically, Bitlayer's market strategy includes launching head mining festivals, ecological rankings, gamified user centers, ecological project centers, BTCFi stacks, and research strategies, aiming to create a Bitlayer ecosystem that is both robust and innovative, adapting to the evolving market environment and user needs.
Subsequently, Charlie Hu, as the host, opened the third roundtable discussion themed "Why DeFi is Important for Bitcoin: Leading the Growth and Challenges of BTCFi," inviting Han Liu, CEO of BitFi, Orlando Wang, head of Antpool Defi, and Nick, CEO of Glittr, as discussion guests.
Among them, Orlando Wang, head of Antpool DeFi, believes that BTCFi is still in a very early stage. He thinks that compared to high TVL (Total Value Locked), high trading volume is a more valuable metric for assessing the Bitcoin on-chain ecosystem. High-value scenarios include generating liquidity with millions of dollars in assets on-chain to meet user lending needs.
BitFi CEO Han Liu pointed out that initially, the on-chain users were mostly active users, which led to high TVL. However, over time, TVL no longer plays a significant role, leading to a shift in perspective where high TVL does not necessarily mean project success; metrics such as user activity and trading volume are more effective.
Following this, the fourth roundtable discussion of the conference was titled "Exploring Bitcoin DeFi: Opportunities and Innovations Based on Holding Assets." Richard Carthon, head of BD at Edge of Bitcoin, served as the roundtable host, inviting Isabella Yu, head of BD at Cobo, Mithil Thakore, CEO of Velar, Sid Sridhar, founder of Bima Labs, and Matt, founder and CEO of Lorenzo Protocol, as discussion guests.
Among them, Sid Sridhar, founder of Bima Labs, pointed out that there are still many accumulated BTC that have not been activated for use. From different perspectives, this portion of BTC can be utilized in lending, collateral, trading, and other scenarios by supporting products that connect to different wallets. He emphasized that security issues related to custody, collateral types, cross-chain bridges, and hacking attacks are crucial.
Matt, founder and CEO of Lorenzo Protocol, mentioned that there are already projects like Babylon in the Bitcoin staking space that provide users with BTC staking for returns. Additionally, some projects adopt neutral strategies and issue assets like stBTC, allowing BTC to be utilized across different Layer 2 chains. Based on this context, the market opportunities we see include aggregators aimed at exploring yields and building multi-layer stacks.
Mithil Thakore, CEO of Velar, believes that BTC involves assumptions related to underlying security, transaction trust, and protocol risks in relevant applications. His team focuses on building BTC products in a decentralized, non-custodial, and trust-minimized manner, creating user-facing infrastructure that ultimately benefits users in a trust-minimized way.
Isabella Yu, head of BD at Cobo, shared with participants how Cobo promotes BTC adoption in broader scenarios. Her team has now partnered with Babylon and several re-staking protocols, handling BTC staking through a multi-party permission management approach using MPC wallets to ensure the security of institutional clients' assets.
The fifth roundtable of the summit was themed "Building the BTCFi System: Community, Collaboration, and Sustainability," inviting Max Andonov, BD assistant at Cointelegraph Accelerator, as the roundtable host, along with Jolestar, founder of Rooch Network, Robby Greenfield, founder of Umoja Labs, and Makoto, co-founder of Pell Network, as discussion guests.
Among them, Robby Greenfield, founder of Umoja Labs, pointed out that BTCFi currently faces issues such as limited scalability, insufficient liquidity, and security, making it difficult to benefit from the current largest market cap of BTC and scale up. If Bitcoin on-chain assets can achieve cross-chain interaction with blockchains like Ethereum and Solana, such as through LayerZero for lending operations between different chains, it would make native BTC more useful. His team is currently developing a protocol focused on high-yield liquid staking tokens, yBTC.
Makoto, co-founder of Pell Network, shared that the challenges faced by BTCFi products in user adoption include differences in user profiles and changes in traditional mining profit strategies. In the process of market expansion and product acquisition, a path can be taken to first promote education to retail users and the community, and once this community foundation is solid, then attract institutional attention and adoption. Additionally, good marketing strategies include clear communication, professional content marketing, and a clear and reasonable project roadmap and implementation plan.
Jolestar, founder of Rooch Network, shared that based on his experience, emerging crypto products can achieve broader user acquisition, including non-crypto users, by simplifying products, providing users with free gas, and attempting to drive traffic from social channels like Twitter and Telegram.
The final segment of the conference was a closing speech by Charlie Hu, co-founder of Bitlayer. After expressing strong gratitude to all parties that supported the smooth progress of the Bitcoin Next Summit, he also mentioned that the recent continuous breakthroughs in Bitcoin prices and the bullish sentiment in the crypto market mean that many developers who continue to build within the Bitcoin ecosystem will benefit from this wave and have a bright future. As the Bitcoin ecosystem continues to prosper and develop, Bitlayer will witness the history and new chapters of Bitcoin together with everyone.
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