Build on Bitcoin: Combining Bitcoin's Security With Ethereum's Versatility - Alexei Zamyatin. Ep 589

Transcript

the challenge that we're facing on the Bitcoin defi side is that there's technical limitations you have Bitcoin in defi today but since Bitcoin only exists on bitcoin and if you want to use it in another chain that has defy you have to deposit it into that chain and it's the same process as depositing into an exchange or another chain right you give it to someone who will saf keep it and then ensure that when you're withdrawing from that chain or platform that you get your Bitcoin back since we are so limited in what we can do in bco scripting language bridging deposit custody logic has always been centralized so far so I think the the biggest Gap two gaps your Rx and making Bitcoin more accessible because honestly if you're an euser and you want to use etherum defi it's super easy right you just use the protocol you have

aggregators have all the tools are there if you want to use Bitcoin you have to first pick a bridge understand the risks you have to deposit your Bitcoin from Bitcoin L1 into that bridge and then like all the interfaces look different so you have this hurdle so that is like the key concept of bit VM there is no like virtual machine per se involved it's a way to Def frer some Bitcoin for the first first time ever now and that allows us to make this gigantic jump from the multi bridge where if three or five signers kugio assets are gone to BVM it's a bit more sophisticated in terms of how to describe security but let's say we have 50 operators in BVM even if all of them colludes they cannot steal as long as somewhere in the network there's one person to trigger a

challenge makes a transaction and says wait a second these guys are trying to steal you off assets are safe welcome to EP Center the show which talks about the technology projects and people driving decentralization and the blockchain revolution I'm Brian Crane and today I'm speaking with Alexa who is the co-founder of Bob Bob stand for building on bitcoin and it's you know it's one of the most uh most far Advanced and uh most interesting Bitcoin layer 2 Bitcoin defi uh projects so I'm excited to speak with Alexa uh today to talk about Bob and talk about Bitcoin and Bitcoin Defi and uh now just before we start the

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compatible nosis chain or secure the network with just one gno and affordable Hardware start your decentralization journey today at nosis doio cool well thanks so much Alexa for for coming on thanks for having me super excited I always find it interesting to start with you know sort of your crypto your personal crypto Journey like how did you get into crypto and how have what have yeah yeah absolutely so it's been 10 years for me since I kind of you know went down the rabbit hole with Bitcoin research I started with namecoin um and that was kind of my first love in the space and I really excited not just

about you know Bitcoin the sense of of money and payments but about censorship resistance and how we can build a better internet and namecoin was the first altcoin it Tred to create a decentralized DNS so your websites can be censor you don't have to ask whether you can buy a domain um and from there it turned into a bit of a random walk I spent some time working on namecoin looking at merge mining then because namecoin was the first blockchain that inherited Bitcoin security at the same like at the same time and spent like a lot of time looking and into kind of these kind of designs um wrote the first paper on merge Mining and like the good things and the bad things about it uh spent some time on Lightning never was a too big fan it always felt a bit too complicated to me for the end users of

of course it is a very great interesting protocol and um essentially after the block size Wars um personally also came to the conclusion like Bitcoin is very hard to change we probably will not do this very often there's no there's no chance that Bitcoin will have native L1 smart contracts the same way that ethereum has them so let's figure out how we can unlock defi or like more use cases for Bitcoin without changing the core protocol so start looking at Bridges side chain designs and that's ultimately what led uh to us building Bob and the reason we're building Bob and the reason for for this I guess pursuit of um something that previously was considered the Holy Grail no longer impossible now

we actually have a blueprint to achieve this um but the pursuit of Bitcoin defi has always been driven by the fact that look Bitcoin started this whole thing right it's it's the thing that kicked off this revolution in finance that we have the centralization we are trying to build a better more transparent Financial system but to do anything with Bitcoin other than payments you are forced to go back to centralized providers right we we have centralized exchanges dominate um Bitcoin holders mainly keep the Bitcoin and if they do something like trading or borrowing lending they go to centralized providers there is a subset of users that use Bitcoin in defi but it it's all backed by centralized Bridges which is fine because we didn't have better technology

so far but what always Bugg me about this is it just makes no sense right Bitcoin is is the biggest digital asset out there it has the biggest Community the best distribution what it kind of feels like sometimes is that we're taking this new thing and then we're kind of plugging it back into the traditional Financial system same with ETFs right it's both cure and curse yes it's great because you have more distribution and you have people getting access to bitcoin that would never have bought it otherwise because they know Pension funds and like it's great but the other on the other hand if in five years 10 years from now we have to go to the bank and ask them hey can I use Bitcoin then for me it's no longer Bitcoin right so that's why we're really pursuing this vision of creating a

system that allows us to access Bitcoin and use it in Define a decentralized manner unlock use cases like trading borrowing lending more advanced products be it even micro payments be micro loans against Bitcoin to borrow Stables but that should be possible without asking permission of a centralized provider because it is possible on ethereum and saline and other chains but it's not possible for Bitcoin and Bitcoin is still bigger and will remain bigger than everything else combined for the for sale future so I I think you've talked a lot about like why Bitcoin defa is so important and I totally agree with you but why has it been so hard I mean it's been so many years and it still feels like it you know very little is is

working in this life today well I mean there's there's multiple challenges with defi right even defi theorum is still hard to use I mean we saw Cy from bance admit totally F admit that never used di5 before ethereum foundation is using def5 for the first time right so you can see that it's still you know a process um defi has not yet reached Mass adoption Bitcoin has however um as an asset so I like you know and then the subset of people who are Bitcoin holders and use defi is actually quite big I would argue everybody who is using defi also has Bitcoin the challenge that we're facing on the Bitcoin defi side is that there's

technical limitations right you have Bitcoin in defi today right but since Bitcoin only exists on bitcoin and if you want to use it in another chain that has defi you have to deposit it into that chain and it's the same process as depositing into an exchange or another chain right you give it to someone who will saf keep it and then ensure that when you're withdrawing from that chain or platform that you get your Bitcoin back and on bitcoin well since we are so limited in what we can do in Bitcoin scripting language this bridging deposit custody logic has always been centralized so far and you ultimately have multi signatures so you have three out of five signers or even if it's like 30 out of 50 doesn't matter you have a set of us that controls your

Bitcoin um and that means that you're you're taking quite big hits in terms of on the security assumptions it's no longer self- custodial it's no longer risk-free you instantly have the centralization bridge risk and I think the bridge hacks over the past years have just you know scared a lot of people from participating in this arguably there still a pretty big defi market for Bitcoin right if you look at wbtc cbtc growing quickly you have Bitcoin lsds emerging so there is clearly demand and people always are looking for creative ways to get the best of both worlds so like you know optimize security to the extent possible but then still make it usable so I think so far it's been these two things

right defi is still early per se the ux isn't great bitcoin's user base is huge right 300 million plus users not all of them know defi most of them actually probably don't know what defi is they probably don't know what an emm is they probably don't know how a it works and then but how like so if you look it from light it from that angle okay yes like not not like the percentage of Bitcoin holders that actually use defi is probably not as high as it should be but then if you look at the defi user base and compare like that to like if you basically look at okay how many of them actually have Bitcoin or how many of them have used Bitcoin in default I using one of these rappers that percentage is actually going to be very very high because the almost everyone is

a bitcoiner at heart I would say everyone has Bitcoin just like a lot of bitcoiners have ethereum and other assets right so I think the the biggest Gap two gaps here are ux and making Bitcoin more accessible because honestly if you're an euser and you want to use ethereum and defi it's super easy right you just you use the protocol you have aggregators you have all the tools are there if you want to use Bitcoin you have to first pick a bridge understand the risks you have to deposit your Bitcoin from bcoin one into that bridge okay most bridges like especially on the rap BDC side the big custodial ones you either you know if you want to actually mint the Bitcoin yourself you have to go to a merchant they'll kyc you there'll be a minimum deposit it's there's going to be fees um and then like all the interfaces look

different so you have this hurdle of like okay it's actually not easy to just get your Bitcoin into Defi and then that's also something we've been working to fix just like make it super easy for an existing defa user to sister Bitcoin that's maybe in The Ledger and they haven't used so far but now want to actually experiment with it and on the other end it's of course the security challenges with so far all the bridges have been centralized yeah so let's talk about the bridges I think that is absolutely one of the most important topics I mean you pointed out right today the vast majority of Bitcoin that's held somewhere else well I think first of all is probably held on ethereum and then uh of that the vast majority is is in wbtc which is um bito

version of Bitcoin and in coinbase version of Bitcoin CB BTC so but let's let's ignore that part for a moment I'm curious about the other part right that's more in in some kind of onchain decentralized way like what's the status there what do you think are the best Solutions and um which ones would you trust or prefer well I think trust is is perceived right there is no it's subjective it's it's user by user everybody has a different notion of trust and that's also something um bitcoiners have learned if you look at lightning for example right

yes you can use it self you can operate it yourself but most people trust a provider than themselves with managing their keys and like managing the whole setup uh you have a lot of Institutions that will just not care about a minor security Improvement and hence will prefer to you using a custodial solution with an Institutional custodian where they just know the business that has the Bitcoin but maybe stepping as like taking a step back as mentioned right if you want to use Bitcoin on another platform whether it's a centralized exchange ethereum or Bitcoin layer 2 you have to deposited into that platform you're giving up custody that's just how it works right you're always losing custody and the biggest question of bridging is how do I get the Bitcoin back like if I'm unwrapping or I've sent it to you Brian and then you want to

unwrap and get get the Bitcoin back that you've purchased on bitcoin L1 how do we enforce that and in the ideal case right if you look at chains like equos like Cosmos and poka do um which specialized like in being interconnected with each having these chains interconnected what you do there is you have two chains that verify each other so when I'm minting when I'm locking my Bitcoin to let's say Bob Bob as a chain will verify that the Bitcoin has been locked and then when I'm withdrawing so I'm burning the rapid TC on Bob and I'm getting them on bitcoin Bitcoin should verify like oh yeah we you're burning this on Bob here's your Bitcoin back like and you should have a smart contract on bitcoin that manages the custody of the assets while they're bridged now the problem is

that Bitcoin just so far could not do that and what you then had is you were we were emulating this smart contract logic that you could build let's say on ethereum or in Cosmos shet or poodot and other ecosystems with smart contract Logic on bacon whereare to emulated using a trust at third party and then we're trying to distribute that trust as much as possible where at big internally has many keys and then you have systems like tbtc which in public right there's like Anonymous signers and there's like 30 to 50 maybe more I think by now um which have these keys and it's but the model is always the same if the majority is honest everything's fine but if the majority is dishonest they can steal all your money and it's not that people like it's not that these Bridge operators actually collude to steal it's just that

they could get hacked right it's also like we've seen with a bate attack today doesn't mean that somebody's malicious these these attacks are very sophisticated and they could just be executed and if you know who to Target you just hack a few devices the fewer devices you need the more likely it is that you can get hacked and then what we've seen so far is in this model right why is tbtc v2o struggled to get more adoption I mean we work with the tbtc team very closely on The Bob side as well and the feedback we receive from many OG Bitcoin holders for a lot of them are institutionalized big institutions funds for them the security upgrade between a trusted multisig where you have a company behind it like pitos rapc or coin misses to okay it's it's a multisig but now there's more sinus but

I don't know who they are that step doesn't make sense for them because for them trust is perceived they prefer the legal risk over the technical risk where they don't know how the system works and you have to build a lot of trust over time for people to make that transition right you have to have a lot of tvl in that more decentralized bridge for people to start using it and it's just like with with yield as well big institutions right they don't move their Bitcoin unless there's a big opportunity or big big Improvement and same with Bridges unless there's a big Improvement to a multi controlled by a custodian they're not going to they're not going to budge and that's where bit VM comes into play that's where basically we're looking at there's like light at the end of the tunnel we now have a way to move

away from multi-c designs on bitcoin and transition to a system which is very close to this like client design where Bitcoin actually verifies um that you're withdrawing back onto Bitcoin layer one from the layer two and with bit VM you have this model that it's basically for those of you who are not super familiar a good comparison is arbitr theum right or optimism M theorum it's a fra prooof based design and the key concept here is that we run some execution of chain we run the verification of chain and if the operators misbehave they can be challenged and we can prevent thefts so that is like the key concept of bitm there is no like virtual machine per se

involved it's a way to Def FR proof some Bitcoin for the first time ever now and that allows us to make this gigantic jump from okay you have a multisig bridge where if three or five signers kudio assets are gone to okay in BVM it's a bit more sophisticated in terms of how to describe security but there's two things we can look at let's say we have 50 operators in BVM even if all of them collude they cannot steal as long as somewhere in the network this there's one person this could be you me anyone the person was using the bridge at that moment to trigger a challenge as long as somebody within the period of time let's say a few days or a few hours usually we work with like seven days makes a transaction and says wait a second these

guys are trying to steal your assets are safe and even if all 50 of them collude the worst thing they could do is is basically hold your funds captive they can freeze your money but they cannot steal it meaning that the incentive to collude is actually very low and the game the behind it turn becomes quite interesting because if you're have 50 operators they don't know if the other if like if they're trying to collude try to collude and coordinate around 50 people that are Anonymous where if anyone of them decides to actually be honest and not not attack the system they'll kick out everybody else and penalize them and actually make money off this so that from game through perspective makes it very very hard to even run a coordinate attack to freeze funds and then of course stealing is just almost impossible and that is such

a huge security upgrade that we think okay that is something where over time people will transition over as we build trust and bitm because it's just such a jump from okay three out of five can steal to right as long as one person's online my assets are safe I want to understand a little bit better you know bit VM and what bit VM is I mean you mentioned 50 operators here uh so but bit BM first of all it's not an upgrade to bitcoin no there's no changes to bitcoin itself correct the the beauty of bit VM is that it it works with Bitcoin as it is today of course like any additional

oper up codes on bitcoin make it easier and help us um but you don't need to change Bitcoin and that I think is is what makes it so exciting like it works as of today and then bitm is is what it's some kind of standard for how you write scripts that and and have them verified on bitcoin or or like or how does it work with VM so so if we I a very good example of explaining bit VM is is um let's say we want to run like a multiplication program in Bitcoin and right let very simply want to multiply two numbers and let's say it's a difficult task like

multiplication of course like we wouldn't use it for multiplication use it for more advances things like Bridges but let's use multiplication as example now what the first thing we have to clear up is what many people don't know is that using Bitcoin script you can write any program you can do Universal computation in Bitcoin script but it's very inefficient and the way to think about it is something that is maybe fine lines of code in solidity um is only is is going to be like a thousand lines of code using Bitcoin script and that means that you know with these like it's just so much bigger so for example if you to write like multiply two numbers on ethereum you just write a multiply like times B you

don't think about how to build multiplication is just a function that's available right to you as a programmer super easy you don't think about it well in Bitcoin you actually have to build it yourself like using logical Gates you actually have to build your multiplication which is just super inefficient you can fit like three multiplications in a single bitcom block if you write them out all yourself which is right so I mean you can think about it is that you're just adding the numbers instead of actually multip so that's the limitation but in theory we can write anything and so what we do in bit VM is we we take a program and we basically you know let's say this multiplication program we split it up as we would in Bitcoin script so let's say like well on solidity in solidity and E the it's like one line in Bitcoin it's

like you just add add add add add add add so let's say we're M we're multiplying two times 10 so in Bitcoin script you'd basically and again I'm oversimplifying this to visualize it but you'd be like okay 2 plus 2 plus 2 plus 2 plus 2 plus 2 plus um and what we do in bit like and then let's assume that this program is too big right of course it can like multiplication can probably get in but think about it now as okay we're actually verifying if you burn something like the wrapped asset on the other chain where you have to check the consensus rules and usually we'll use a ZK proof and you need to plug in the ZK verifier into Bitcoin script and that ZK verifier is currently I mean it's down to 400 megabytes but it's still way too big it doesn't fit into a block a big

block is for megabytes in size like we really optimized it it just doesn't work so what we do is we chunk it up just like with this multiplication example we take it and we split into subprograms that if you run them all after the other you get the same results and then what we do in bit VM is we say okay you will now as an operator you're you're going to commit using onchain commitments that and this is what we actually do in script that you're going to run exactly this program like you and I will agree you're going to run exactly this program let's say it's again multiplication example you and I agree that you're going to run this multiplication on on on offchain and then you're going to give me the result and post it onchain and then as an operator you're going to run it so you multiply two

times 10 and then if you write 20 I clearly can verify it it's correct you run exactly the program that you're supposed to we're good now if you say it's 19 which is clearly wrong I can see that I'm going to challenge you so I'm going to say wait a second you're lying because I know that this like I ran it offchain on my machine I know that this is this is wrong now I just need to find out where you modify the program so I can prove to all the Bitcoin full nodes that you're cheating and then prevent you from taking money out of this out out of this bit VM deposit and let's assume like I put some money in and if you give me the right answer you're going you're able to take it out so I'm paying you for computation very simple

example so what I'll do is I'll post a challenge transaction and that gives you seven days or whatever or a few hours it's parameter to respond and when you have to resp spun by posting the intermediary results of your computation so what you're going to do is you're going to start with 0 2 4 6 because you're always adding two right two 4 6 8 10 and then let's say at some point you say 11 and then it's 13 15 so you clearly that's that's wrong like like 10 plus 2 is not 11 right but I will see that I will see that in this step that's exactly where you've tried to cheat and then what I'll do is I'll take that subprogram exactly only this piece that takes us input 10 p and ads to and I'm going to run it in a Bitcoin transaction

and I'm going to link it back to the commitments you've made using Bitcoin script and like lamp or signatures which is a cool concept but we don't have to go into that in detail but what what this allows me to do is I can prove to everyone on bitcoin that you've cheated because I can show look you're saying that the running this program gives 11 as a result but it's actually if I run it on chin all the full notes will check it it's 12 you're cheating you'll not get the money out and now if we take a step back and think about the bridging in this in the bridging case you could be trying to manipulate the recipient address so you're as an operator you're supposed to send a Bitcoin to me but you're sending it to yourself right and since we know exactly

what the program should look like because we've agreed on like this is what you're going to do you committed to it onchain with using like onchain commitments I can always prove that you're cheating and the cool thing is this only requires two transactions right I challenge you respond and then I proof and we're done and these transactions are not cheap but I can guarantee that every Bitcoin full node will know that you're misbehaving and prevent you from accessing the funds which in the bridge case is very good because that means you as an operator if you're trying to steal funds from Bitcoin I can prevent you from doing that I will invalidate your attempt to withdraw basically yeah so the CK verifier was like 400 megabytes so like you would

break it into like I don't know I I mean 400 parts of one megabyte or something or actually I I got it wrong so it's one gigabyte in size and where just in current practice right where it's currently the sizing is 1 Gigabyte after optimizations and what we're doing is we're breaking into chunks of 400 kilobytes but the these chunks could be maximum 4 megabytes in size but then there's like a balance between like do you make the chunk smaller so it's cheaper for to to to challenge you and to prove you're wrong or to make it cheaper for the operator to respond like there's some like parameters that you can move back and forth but that's basically the idea if that challenge happens 400

kilobyte okay that's like a quart a tenth of a Bitcoin block size so okay probably pretty expensive or or how much does that cost in terms of fees I mean there is like a fact like you have to model the fees we don't know how the Bitcoin fees like how the Bitcoin price and the Bitcoin the market is going to develop um so that is of course something we have to pay attention to and the idea is that as an operator you're preposi some amount of Bitcoin let's say 0.1 to one BTC right could be less but that is used to if you misbehave that we take that money and that's used to reimburse like or to cover the costs of um somebody challenging you or like there is some

cost to the operator for like also not Mis like misbehaving um but the the the main Point here is that the these costs and the maybe some deposits the operator has to make to offset these costs for potential Challengers so like you know if I'm challenging I don't pay my the cost myself all of this is completely independent to the tvl to the amount of Bitcoin deposited so sure if you have only like 10 BTC in the system paying zero like 0.1% uh 0.1 BTC in like cost of challenging is quite high if you have 100,000 Bitcoin posit it it's nothing right and so bitm it's like security is always you know there's no perfect

security you always have to balance the like cost versus benefit and if you have a small system that has no tvl then using bit Fame is an Overkill if you're a big Bitcoin L2 that is getting a lot of tvl then yes you should definitely use it because there is some cost Associated but if you have a lot of tvl your chin is making fees you can have a pot that will offset any operational challenging cost for people to who are actually enforcing safety right so they can omics can be modeled and it it basically scales with size the bigger the cheaper it gets yeah yeah I mean I guess it's it's like with all these fraud systems right in the end you're trying to create incentives such that such that uh you know it never makes sense to try to attack it and then

you never actually have to go through this and you never have to pay all this uh but then of course you still need to have the situation that let's say you don't get to to a point where maybe it would be so expensive to get this challenge into the Bitcoin chain that like it's not worth for anyone to like challenge anything uh or or like maybe maybe you'd even struggle to get it in at all uh you know so I guess that that is still a scenario you have to worry about absolutely I mean there is no like perfect safety in that there's always risk associated and in this case you have to trust that there's someone online that will post a transaction and that transaction will get into the Bitcoin blockchain but to prevent that

transaction from and then now it's a question of fees right if you have a big like for example for us as Bob like we'll have a pot like if you're willing to you can crowdfund this transaction first of all you can multiple users can come together provide the the inputs to the fees or and then we can have a pot on Bob that basically again verifies that oh if you've made a successful challenge here's a pot here's a bounty for you to actually you know reclaim actually Mak some money on this because again if we have a lot of tvl that system generates fees part of that has to be reinvested into security and that is this that's where we have bug bounties and whatnot we invest in audits um if you look at this the numbers like purchasing in the worst case you like

what's the worst case you have to buy a full block that's like say the worst worst case scenario the average cost of last two years to buy a full Bitcoin Block in terms of feast was 0.1 to 0.3 BTC so again it's not cheap but it's also not the end of the world right it's actually doable especially if you think that this could be securing a multi-billion dollar ecosystem if it's securing $10 okay then no that doesn't make sense so yeah but we're talking about again about unlocking Bitcoin defa you have 20 15 to 20 billion depending on the price and like how much Moves In and Out of BDC wrapped into defund five a half billion dollars staked in Babylon with these numbers it's already worth it right so

we're just at a stage where there's so much demand from Bitcoin defi that using bit VM it's like we're past this kind of hurdle of are we sure that people want to use Bitcoin and def5 are there enough people are going to bridge in so what's the status with bit VM so today there's no Bridge life right that leverages bit VM but uh are there like a bunch of different people building bridges and what's the what's the timeline here so bit VM bridges are currently in testet state already so right now they're on test Nets um you've seen prototypes live uh launch uh end of last year staring P4 had a few teams including us showcase like okay here's the transactions like the system is

already working and now it's all about like fine-tuning it cleaning up the code audits to get a public test net and depending when this podcast is hearing there may or may not be a bob public test net for bitf already live um and then the way we kind of see this is we're expecting roll out to happen throughout this year you'll probably see systems initially launch with training wheels and then gradually remove all the additional six safety mechanisms so you fully rely on this Prov verifier logic I mean yes sure it's taking a while but if you look at the like what we've actually done is we've created a system that can allow like trust minimize Bitcoin bridging and rollups it took etherum five plus years to get to that Bitcoin

is moving much faster because a lot of the ZK stuff is already there right a lot of the infrastructure is there so we don't have to reinvent it from scratch this like the interesting part is the ZK rollup thing or the ZK component with with Bitcoin l2s like within bitm it's different that it's not a z rollup right we're actually just using it as a pre-processing step instead of I could plug in the whole computation right from the evm into into that bit VM part but it's just going to be always it's going to be huge and inefficient and with the with the snark we just standardize it right you always get the same thing which is constant in size and it allows you just to kind of plug in different computations so for anything where you can generate a star proof it works with

bit VM that's kind of the way to think about it and what we expect to see is main Nets um later this year so I mean on our side we're going to start rolling it out and after the audits are complete and it's going to take a while realistically speaking because I don't expect everyone to on they want to throw money at this oh I'm going to bridge in with using bit VM there are some ux components that need to be fine-tuned and people need to build trusts like how many people can actually look at a zika verifier and tell you oh yeah this is secure not that many so it takes time to build a community of developers Auditors open source contributors that have looked at it and um have said okay this is safe I'm going to use it and then you start

you have the Deion coming in because they they're excited about it and the our approach is also here working with institutional Partners from day war in fact we're already working with a big group of institutional Partners at to a educate them about bit VM but also understand how could this bit VM system fit into their current setup like my personal view is you know there's a lot of people like building BVM and like trust minimized Bridges and what they do is they attack they see bck or see rapid DC is bad cdbc is bad it will all get hacked all your money is lost if you're using this you're guilty you're basically ignoring your safety and I think that's just the wrong approach nobody of these rapid EC providers wants to steal your money they're trying to

build the most secure system with the technology that's Cally available I think the approach we should be taking is working with them and saying hey like here's an upgrade instead of using NPC in your back end you could use bit VM complexity wise it's pretty similar but bit VM is just so much better and and that's the approach we're taking so I honestly think bitf will be commoditized and the only way that we get this adopted properly in a reasonable amount of time is by working with partners and Bridge providers as they are today and help upgrade the entire ecosystem to a better security standard that will take some time but we'll see bitm on Main net in 2025 for for sure okay okay and so so I get one approach is to try to convince

I don't know coin base and bitgo and stuff to maybe use this uh now uh for Bob so do you guys because you mentioned also okay there's different operators so will those be specific to Bob and you're going to have like the Bob Bitcoin which is a version that's like bridged over with bit VM and then I don't know some other roll up will have their own or like CU I I I think like one challenge you end up here right is you could end up with like a whole bunch of different you know Bitcoin versions that are kind of rich in different ways that you know maybe kind of similar security underneath but maybe not exactly identical or like how do you see that do

you see like lots of versions or I think can there be like one version of B VM that's like you know one token that really gets a lot of traction there's going to be lots of versions I mean you know how things are like you have a thousand standards and we say oh let's make a standard to unite these standards and we have a thousand And1 standards so um plus with bridging it's not just about the standard but it's actually about the bridge design itself a lot of the design of the bridge depends on the security model of the L2 and each of these l2s is actually making different TR Jitters and assumptions right like in our case for example with Bob we're building a hybrid we're using Bitcoin staking as Bitcoin finality and then and we're using that like and

that's what we're doing right now because that's what currently is already possible like this will be possible in 2025 you can use Bitcoin staking for a finality and build a bitf breach that relies on bitcoin stakers being honest if you want to build a full Bitcoin roller or you post all the data to bitcoin that design is different that design is still very early it's very expensive to do right now we haven't seen this in production even close right so there's different like some chains a merge mind on bitcoin like to inher bitcoin security others don't even inher Bitcoin security at all right there's teams trying to bridge to ethereum down using bitf which in my opinion will not properly work just because these systems don't have secure L clients so the designs will differ I think what will be similar is the core but even from the

core right you have bit vm2 which is um the design that that I work with with on what where Robin and I and a bunch of other researchers work together to kind of you know put together a full spec of how this bit VM system can be used to build a bridge and how it actually can be built in production but there was bit VM like the version that Robin first wrote and then you had a bunch of other teams like Fork off that to have their custom designs there's bit BMX there is um other versions right of of this and some teams have then abandon theirs and come back to build a bit vm2 so I think what you'll see is a completely new kind of set of of approaches that try to achieve the same but for an operator um it's going to be similar to staking so

proof of stake right there's so many proof of stake chains and they have nuances the concept is the same but they're all nuanced um I don't know if this is really going to be a blocker for operators because I think staking providers and like custodians that's their bit bread and butter right they they integrate staking on different chains and they have to understand the nuances um and of course that's why we're talking with with all of them already because we want to understand like what are the things we should avoid to make sure it's easy to integrate but in terms of liquidity fragmentation I I can definitely see challenges there but on the other hand again since every from a biton users perspective if you're bridging to Bob you have a different trust assumption than if you're bridging to another L2 right there's tradeoffs these two bitco

conversions there's no benefit for them being fungible because you if you want to so let's say I've deposited Bitcoin into Bob so I have Bob BTC which is secur by bit VM and that's the one we we build and Operate Now I want to BR another Bitcoin that also has a bitm bridge right it's similar security models but they have fine tune like they're using let's say merge mining or or something else or like they're like use they posting all the data to bitcoin it's more expensive but they're doing that I still have to bridge over my asset somehow and that's where it gets interesting like there is optimizations already being developed in bit VM that will allow an operator to actually use like like plug into multiple Bitcoin l2s and act actually as a cross-chain router

so even if the individual versions are different the Bitcoin that's locked in is like similar so like I can manage multiple like bit instances with like different parameters based on different chains and I just like act as a liquidity Bridge like intent Bri operator we see this on eel 2s that's already happening right if you're going between different eel tws you're using intend based or like liquidity or like burnam impes same here so I honestly don't see this as a big problem I know it's annoying um but again if you're depositing into coinbase that Bitcoin is different to the one you deposit into binance so we're it's not like we're introducing new ux problems they just exist already right your dollars in bank one are not the same dollars in in Bank two until he withdraw

them okay cool cool so let's go a bit more into Bob so you mentioned uh Bitcoin staking so and and you know I understand you know Big Bob is basically a rollup like evm roll up so yeah explain to us a bit more about the architecture of Bob absolutely so with Bob our vision is to create a hybrid L2 and this is a new kind of approach to to putting Bitcoin at the center of defi so it has multiple components the first and foremost is Bitcoin security like Bob will inherit Bitcoin security there's multiple ways

of doing that and I'll talk about like we're rolling out this in three phases but will have Bitcoin security we'll use bit VM for the Bitcoin bridge and then there's two additional components we have the evm server op stack compatible where super CH member right super easy for you to onboard and deploy their contracts and they only need to think about about the Bitcoin side of things and we're actually connected to ethereum so we have a native bridge to e and we can have native Bridges to other chains as well and the way this works is um you have Bitcoin Security on Bob so that means that if you want to deposit from ethereum onto Bob how do you know that

Bob is secure right well because bab is Bitcoin security you actually go look at Bitcoin and you like you say okay is like Bob at block 10,000 has this like finalized is that state correct specifically those to for withdrawals like the E smart contract that has handling withdrawals similar to how it's done with optimism right right now in optimism arbitrum it will check for E fra proofs has it been a fra proof on ethereum within the last seven days to prove that the optimism chain has failed if no you're good take your assets out back to ethereum now what we do there instead of looking at e proofs we modify the contract to run a Bitcoin like client and that like client on bitcoin what does it looks at the Bitcoin blockchain and can track what's going on there and then we'll just look at okay

Bob at the Block Bob block 10,000 we can see that it's finalized on bitcoin you can see a Bitcoin transaction in for example in the case of staking you'll see that okay it's been signed off but the majority of the Bitcoin stakers and they can track and see how much Bitcoin stake is committing to that and if you're using bit VM for that in the future with fra proofs you can also check okay there's no fra proof on bitcoin but the cool thing is you're doing this all from with within the E smart contract so on the ethereum side you're verifying Bitcoin and that's been possible since 2016 super easy to do it's been running in production for ages Bob has one and like tbtc is using such a light client so that and that means as an eth user when you're bridging into Bob you're trusting Bob's Bitcoin

security model and if there's one thing that we're as a Bitcoin Maxi eth Maxi Sal Maxi we can all agree on if there's one thing is that Bitcoin is secure if Bitcoin goes belly up we all go home right that's the Assumption we make just from practical like perspective every day we go to work and build in this in this equos system if bitron breaks we're all gone like did this this will not survive so it's a very easy kind of sell to make to people like instead of you know trusting another like interoperability layer or like you know another blockchain that is supposed to do inoperability okay just trust Bitcoin that's the one thing we're already trusting and since Bitcoin is so easy to verify every smart contract capable with blockchain be eth poot Cosmos Avalanche SOI move bar doesn't matter they can all

verify Bitcoin and that means we can have native Bridges to all of these chains secured by Bitcoin so what does that mean this means that an eth user can deposit their eth into Bob trade it against Bitcoin but also trade it against to buy let's say soul and then you can always withdraw back to the underlying layer one as long as Bitcoin works and yes you have like some levels of okay is it Bitcoin staking is it full Bitcoin roll up right but ultimately you're trusting that you know this Bitcoin security model is operational so that's one thing so you can basically instead of like if you think about how do people trade so against eth or S against bar they'll go to binance there is no other really efficient way to do that in the future

they'll be able to go to these hybrid l2s like Bob and just do it there because you can deposit swap withdraw without having to worry about trusting binance you trusting Bitcoin security and then at the same time from a Bitcoin usage perspective and that's what we're focusing on right now is okay I have Bitcoin I want to use it in defi I can one click deployed into Bob because Bob has that one click Bitcoin staking product where we can one clict deploy into different bit strategies that's independent from the bridge that's built on top but then I can also say okay I actually want to use it on ethereum or on Salan like there's an opportunity for me to earn yield on my Bitcoin on ethereum of course do your own research be cautious there's always risks if you're bridging to etherum you're trusting eth right that needs to be

clear but that deposit process of from Bob to eth that's secure by Bitcoin so I don't have to trust another bridge for me to be able to access ethereum from Bitcoin so I Bob has the more secure version of BTC bridged using bit VM and that can be then accessed on ethereum and then you can the cool thing is you can manage this all from within Bob you can have vaults that you know deposit this into ethereum def5 products like a Moro um Pendle same with Solana same with Bara um but these the connection like the actual process of okay you have Bitcoin on Bob and now we're moving it to E that part is secured Again by bqu because the we're using this bridge that is native that use that verifies that okay everything that's going on on Bob is

locked is secured by Bitcoin so we just check that and so your trust is now Bitcoin security and ethereum or Bitcoin and salana and like which is arguably better than anything else so but just to clarify this a bit right because in the end so you guys are planning to use Babylon right or or Ben you say Bitcoin I mean cuz he's saying like Okay Bitcoin security but I mean it's not it's not comparable right in the security properties to you know I send a Bitcoin transaction to you and it's just a normal Bitcoin transactions it's same chain and it's in the block and now it's six blocks deep and we're like well

that's a different so there's trade-offs right and and basically these trade-offs are also um economical so the way that Bob is approaching this is right now phase one we don't have Bitcoin security we're in ether rollup and we focused on building out this Tech with bit VM and like integrating Bitcoin security and but on the product side we focus on like oneclick deployments like you improving the Bitcoin defi ux working with tier one defa protocols from ethereum to actually make it easier for them to accept L1 deposits from Bitcoin so instead of you going to five different Bridges know one click and you can go into any strategy so that's been the focus and that's that's basically so the idea that I I put my Bitcoin into I don't know some Vault or

something on Bob I mean do you guys then try to deploy you know Ave and and Moro and all of these kind of Def protocols on Bob itself or like you're trying to somehow give people access to defy on other chains via Bob uh both so in this phase one right this like why while the tech is being developed we focus on product like the two two kind of verticals like the core Tech with like Bitcoin security and bit VM which is now hitting test net and like we're entering this phase two in 25 but so far we focused then on the product side of okay building the Bob def ecosystem having the best defa Primitives right we have

Unis swap for example working with the top lending markets to build like a base defer on Bob but then also with we're releasing a new product these vaults that I mentioned that's a new thing and depending when this podcast I mean actually yeah we're releasing it today tomorrow so it's called hyber BDC and these vaults allow you then to deploy your Bitcoin from Bob into positions let say selling like you know apy from Bitcoin taking lsds on penal for fixed yield getting it back and then you can use them on Bob again to use it in Bob as collateral to trade it to lever up whatever so you basically we you get these yield bearing representations of Bitcoin so that Bitcoin is Stak on ethereum and you cannot do something with it and it could also the same can be in LSD that's also Stak in b on so

you can build different layers on top which of course incre risk without question but there is clearly demand for it and people have to you know make an assessment of like what they want to do with it um that's phase one right that doesn't have Bitcoin security that's just pure product validation do people do that and it works with all the big rapid EC and Bitcoin LSC providers and in phase two because you correctly like you pointed out earlier like Bitcoin taking is not the same as Bitcoin at L One Security that is true almost true so there is a trade-off Bitcoin security right so in PH to what we add is Bitcoin sticking we're working with Babylon and this means that you have a couple of billion worth dollars with a Bitcoin that is staked in securing that system so as long as the tvl of Bob doesn't

exceed that we're fine right because then if you're stealing if you if these stakers try to misbehave they will lose their Bitcoin like the probabilities are revealed if you double sign if you're trying to create a bob Fork you're creating you signing twice for the same block the way Babylon staking works is it has a cool trick where you private key will be revealed on bitcoin through Bitcoin or lost and what we do with Bob then is as an ether rollup right we first of so it it's actually a bigger upgrade that's happening but we become a ZK rollup right we transition to a full ZK rollup on ethereum as well so for E users we Z rollup right in phase two but for Bitcoin users we add this Bitcoin staking component so then the Bitcoin stakers they verify that what the

sequencer is doing so when the sequencer is producing the proof the we send it first to the stakers of that have Bitcoin stake they verify it and then they sign off and only if 2third of the Bitcoin Stak has signed off we can then post it to ethereum and ethereum will actually check that it's not only it's valid proof but it's been approved by the Bitcoin stakers because we're merging like the Bitcoin security and the E Security in this model and we do that we add the Bitcoin security for okay Bitcoin finale faster withdrawals but also because that's how we can build a bitm bridge because in bit VM what we verify on the bit VM side in on the Bitcoin end when you verifying whether okay I'm withdrawing from Bob is you're verifying the ZK proof but you're also

checking like you need to know like because I can give you two proofs for different states and they're all both valid right but I have two different transactions in them that might be conflicting so you cannot detect like you can I can give you a valid proof but you won't know if that's the actual chain of Bob and to determine whether like when I'm telling you oh I've correctly with as an operator sent you know somebody with withdrawing and I has an oper correctly processed that and here's a proof that I did this correctly you need to know that this is actually the bell2 state that that that's visible to everyone not just I'm trying to to kind of submit a fake state but the proof could still be valid right it could be all like the rules could be fine but I'm pretending that it's not

you withd drawing but me and for this that's where the Bitcoin stakers need to sign off so the Bitcoin seers check whether I'm actually as an oper as a sequencer doing everything correctly and then we in bit we also check that component like has the majority of Bitcoin State confirmed that this ZK proof is specifically for the actual Bob state that everybody is is seeing in the public and that ensures that it's very hard to attack because now to attack the system you not only have to you know generate a fake zq proof you also have to and corrupt the sequence you have to attack the majority of the big takers and then for the eth user you also have to for the E for eum users you also then have to attack ethereum to prevent the FR a ziki proof from being submitted so

they this just makes Bob in phase two the most secure el2 in practice because you have these two security models merged into one into one kind of layer um but yes in Bitcoin staking the big there's a difference between insecurity right it's not like every Bitcoin full node is verifying it's a subset of nodes that have Bitcoin stake it's same with merge mining right so there's a subset of of nodes and everybody can participate right everybody can run a node and become a Staker but not every full node is participating there's like one then step to get to this full almost full Bitcoin security level and the reason why we like in phase three what will then happen is we take the the like the proving like we turn off the ziki proofs

on ethereum you on ethereum we no longer check anything except Bitcoin right in phase two we still check the ziki proofs on ethereum and we also we check that the stakers have signed off and then in phase three what we then do is we switch to full roll of of on bitcoin where we post the proofs specifically using bit VM we have been fraud proofs on bitcoin so we kind of go from ZK full ZK proofs State validity proofs on ethereum to okay we now plug it into Bitcoin or we only can do fraud proofs and then we have to post the data on chain which is very expensive and that's what's prohibiting us right now from going to phase three directly because we be paying as a user You' be paying 100 to 1,000 x more in fees just because the cost on bitcoin will be so high to keep

posting the data so you can then generate the fra proof but in phase three once Bob is big enough we can make that transition and then we have this bit FM security model where as long as there's one user in Bitcoin that is online I can this user which can be you or me or anyone can enforce that all the Bitcoin full nodes will see that there's a fraud going on and prevent it so that's the final stage and that is where you get very close to full Bitcoin security right it's still not quite the same because you have the Assumption there needs to be one person online somewhere but arguably in practice the difference is very minim is very very small because if you're running a wallet for on your phone you're actually not downloading the for blockchain you're already trusting that some there's a

honest node that's going to give you the honest data like hey did you get paid or not so in practice that's almost the same as having full Bitcoin security but the only limitation here is the cost for this to work we have to keep posting the State updates like we need to keep posting commitments to bitcoin so that you can create a fra proof so you as a user can see oh I have the data to then show that you're misbehaving and that would introduce way too high fees right now and that's why we have this gradual release in phase two look honestly it's more secure than any other Bitcoin L2 any other E2 it's good enough and then as the system grows and we exceed the tvl limits deposit limits of like what Bitcoin taking can ensure then we can

add this full Bitcoin security through bit VM on top so not only use bitm for the bridge but for the State like if you think about it when we use bitum for the bridge in Phase 2 when do you run the checks you only run it when somebody's withdrawing right then you check okay is everything right on Bob is it fine can I accept the withdrawal is it is it correct in a full rollup you do this continuously every minute every block every few blocks you continuously have to just revalidate which makes it very expensive and so that really only works at a certain size of the rollup when you have millions of users so that the difference in fees per users is maybe a cent um and I think it's quite important to think

pragmatically here because we don't want to end up with another lightning which is secure but unusable one thing I'm curious about I mean today actually one of the largest um Bitcoin versions on ether or like outside of Bitcoin is um and I guess it's the largest one that's not like custodial really is like Lombard Bitcoin so lbtc with all due respect to the Lombard team they're a great team to work with Lombards but it is custodial so I think it's very important to clarify everything today is still it's still a multisig it's institutional custody and you can do it in a very secure manner but you still have this custodial aspect

behind it like that is always present so but I'm I'm still curious basically whether you think like I mean I think you are working on decentralizing this as well or like like if you have some kind of basically LRT type token you know like a lombar Bitcoin that okay now it's like bridged somewhere else but it's also you know ACU some Babalon points and Lan board points or tokens and maybe it's used you know it's kind of like it can be yield bearing you know even before it's being used in those other chains so that seems pretty compelling probably I imagine for

a lot of users so do you think of something like lbtc also as like a version of Bri Bitcoin or you think that like how do you think about this so I me absolutely I mean lsds so the way that I mean and it's quite relevant for Bob because again as when as we're becoming a Bitcoin sit Network we actually are the source of these fees right like the fees generated on Bob are the fees that the lbtc stakers that's what they're actually making money on in the future right that's where the fees come that's where they're staking award come from they come from our chain having enough like generating like getting and that's where lsts are so powerful because it create this powerful liquidity fly because like people stake Bitcoin they mint LSD so they can move it around it's a yield bearing asset

right that's getting fees for being like locked into staking just like on ethereum but in this case on bitcoin and then you put them on Bob and in defi this creates volumes this generates fees which pays the taking Awards the more fee volume the more fees the more heal like sing words for Bitcoin Bitcoin has no native yield right except for Mining and then you have all the risk of like managing the equipment so the the the bar for like how much you have to generate for people to consider staking it is quite low like there's not much competition so again it will attract more Bitcoin to be staked and babyon already has like 5.5 billion right so this will keep ATT tracking more BDC that will get Minted as an LST using for example Lombard is one example of a Bitcoin LST that is sticked into Babylon

which can be used on Bob the more tvl the more fees go back and again that attracts more liquis basically starts cycling liquidity so the LSD is a version of rap Bitcoin because the Bitcoin is custody it's Sten to Babylon but it is also custody because it's not the users managing their own staking deposits you basically what the way it works you you were Del you're delegating to the LST provider who then has either their own finality providers or they delegate to other finality providers in Partnership and then basically it's it's like delegated staking but and then they give you the LSD so it's basically like Lio right and then you can use that on Bob as well and in the future and I like I that's something that people are looking at and

we're AC looking at and I know there's like interest also from LS providers um to then you can do this with bit VM right like you can basically if you the custody component of like how is a Bitcoin kept like yes it's taken to Babylon but like who makes a stake who actually has the Bitcoin and then Stakes it that component can be again in bit VM you can actually have this reflected in bit VM so in Bob's VM Bridge which you can do in the future is you can say oh I'm just getting like native rap Bitcoin it's secure but bit VM it's safe or I can opt into another version where okay when I'm St when I'm bridging it at the same time it's being St into deposited into Babylon because you can verify any like you can actually have this step in the bit VM program

like okay the Bitcoin goes in it's deposited to Babylon and you're earning saing rewards and you're getting an LST version of bit VM BTC so that definitely works and in fact is as you said a very powerful um interesting use case so it's kind of it's it's not an alternative bit VM can also help improve the security of these systems yeah okay very cool I would say maybe as a sort of like last topic to touch on sort of where do you see that Bitcoin defi going on on what time Horizon right like I mean I think today we have around two uh trillion in Bitcoin market cap or maybe a little bit less

uh and I think around maybe 20 billion right are held in this kind of like wrapped version so it's like 1% I'm not exactly sure how much of that is actually being used in you know some sort of defi activity I I guess it's probably pretty significant percentage but what's your and and you mentioned also institutions in the beginning so what's your expectations for how Bitcoin defa ecosystem is going to develop in the next you know a few years I honestly think that Bitcoin defa right now is one of the large if not the largest opportunity in in crypto and like fintech of the decade because as you said like it's such a huge market and only it's less than a percent that

has actually been deployed less than a percent it's like 0.1 to 0.5 depending what you count as like defi um so with like and then we debated at the beginning of this of this kind of podcast right like why have people deployed it yet it's the ux it's the security it's also just like the the adoption of of of defi products like these defi chains the adoption of ethereum and Solana is nothing compared to the adoption of Bitcoin globally and so if and there's of course there's always a big if right if we can convert more users more ponos from exchanges from their Ledger devices right and give them a choice like if you want to do something do it in defi that could be a major unlock and the the

tools and the things that need to happen is of course on one hand the more secure ways of using Bitcoin and defi because people are concerned about losing their BDC but also building more building more defi products and specifically improving distribution improving the way that you can access so instead of you having to go and like wrap it that that people like if you have to start talking to people about oh you have to wrap your Bitcoin and then you can stake it you get this lstd and then you have to put it into a lending Market to get a receipt token that you can activate as collateral then you can that just yes for you and me we use def5 that's clear for ret like no it's they're way too complex so what you need to basically do and that's the cool thing is that defi is

experiencing a Renaissance as a whole right now with ux improving significantly at the same time what's happening on bitcoin is you're unlocking secure ways of doing that so what I think will happen in the next five years is that Bitcoin defi is going to become one of the biggest Catalyst and like liquidity sources in the entire ecosystem and it's just going to it's going to grow I mean I don't know how much it will grow in practice it there's you know Al a lot of factors but it could grow by like 100 to 300X in size because if you look at ethereum's tvl to market cap ratio we're at 30% on bitcoin we're at what 0.1 0.3 something like this so we have like this huge potential

to unlock a completely new kind of ecosystem of of Define and what we what you can see in practice is that every change every major protocol in the def5 space has a Bitcoin strategy where has been working on one I mean we work with a bunch of top tier def5 teams on Building defa Products whether they're directly inol working with them together for these like high BC vaults and you see a lot of chains announced like oh we're going to now like star con it is also announcing oh they're going to also be connected to bitcoin you see Tron for example May if you look at like late last year like mid last year they said oh we're going to we want to build a Bitcoin Al that's connected to bitcoin and Tron so like cardano right you name it like everybody is now looking to try

to get access to bitcoin um and the Beautiful Thing here is that Bitcoin l2s are just uniquely positioned to to capture that market because again all of this thing all the things we just discussed about better secure deposits and and so on these things only really work well with Bitcoin secured networks so Bitcoin layer twos so I think not will Bitcoin defi grow and the institutional interest is definitely present you've seen like institutions with Babylon and likeit coin defi they've started you've had wallets move Bitcoin in that haven't done anything with a Bitcoin for like 5 to 10 years people have tasted blood like they've tasted like oh I can use this now there is a way for me to do this now I just need to now get comfortable with the risks and assess like how do I want to

use it but it's not certainly possible and it's a combination of you know bit VM being making progress Bitcoin staking defi experiencing SS as a whole defi ux making this in huge leap to oh need to note down my seed phrase too I I can sign in with my Twitter account this combination I think is exactly the recipe that we need to be able to onboard hundreds of millions of retail users that have Bitcoin into Defi and just giving them a better option than centralized exchanges um so I predict this is going to be the biggest thing over the next five years in terms of growth in the crypto space yeah I mean I so this makes me think of one of the last episodes I did the last episode I did which was with SC

from Turtle Club H you know we talked a lot about defi on a high level and and just how amazingly efficient and composable and dynamic uh the defi ecosystem has become and it's really amazing also how how high yield you can earn on dollars and how you can use the thing in you know five different protocols at the same time the downside certainly is there's a lot of complexity and it's hard to understand the risks but you can still just see that I think what to me feels very obvious is that this kind of financial system is going to evolve at a such so much higher

rate and it's going to end up being so much more efficient that it will replace the existing Financial uh system and then of course in Bitcoin right people have always been excited about this idea you know hyperbitcoinization or the idea that you know Bitcoin can be this this uh you know Global Reserve asset and maybe replace gold or you know have you know really achieved this enormous role in in the financial system in the world and you know right now is basically really just this coin you buy and I hope it goes up in value and that's kind of mostly what it does now of course it's in ETFs and people can

borrow against it in some context and there's a bit more going on but yeah I do feel like that kind of merger of Defi and Bitcoin I mean is first of all crucial for Bitcoin to really have a shot at be at becoming this crucial um building block of the financial world and then of course I think you're totally right it does it does just represent a a huge opportunity right I mean I think I think total value in defi locked is 100 billion is that right I I I'm I might be wrong you mean

like uh in Bitcoin lock or in total total total def uh yeah I'm looking at defa it's like 107 billion right exactly right so then you're basically yeah so if you're certainly very feasible right that Bitcoin starts to make up a very meaningful percentage of that you know within you know maybe the next um two years or so yeah I fully agree like if you just Compare the numbers and the the the the dimensions here right like the thing yes like Bitcoin is is so fascinating because yes it's a hard Market it's hard to to to grow in that market you have to

spend a lot of time build a lot of trust um and you have to be for the long game right I've seen like there's when we started Bob and we kind of we one of the first if not the first to go out and say look you know what we're going to give this another shot like I know there was other teams like working in parallel but at that time maybe like there was three four teams working in stealth and like trying to take get have another shot at Bitcoin l2s now you have over 75 Bitcoin l2s right and I think there's also of course many people who not see this as a big opportunity and want to come in and say oh let's make some quick money let's build this out quickly that's not how Bitcoin works like if you're trying to come in just pump the numbers and then

you know expect this to scale from zero to one within a month Bitcoin is going to chew you up and spit you out like he Bitcoin is is a you're playing at the high stakes tbling but if you win in Bitcoin you win the entire Market just because of its sheer size Global adoption dominance I mean I the brand itself alone right if the news talks about crypto they talk about Bitcoin except when they specifically mentioned The Ether TF otherwise it's always Bitcoin bitcoin price is going up bitcoin price is going down oh something happened with Bitcoin nation state adopts Bitcoin Reserve it's always Bitcoin and if you just look at the numbers right the total like the entirety of defi today is merely 5% of bitcoin's market cap so I think you know if we can get this to

work that is probably the best way to not only you know make Bitcoin more useful but it's probably the best way to actually take defi mainstream using Bitcoin rails and the trust that Bitcoin brings with it and just the global adoption and the recognizability to just get more users into defi get them chain cool well thank you so much Alexa for coming on I really enjoyed this discussion uh I think it was great to to learn a bit learn more about bitm and just the power there regarding bridging I think that sounds uh sounds very cool and also really enjoyed hearing kind of like the vision of how you see Bob play you know Bob launching and then evolving

using Bitcoin Security in the future so yeah thanks so much for coming on I'm super excited about this you know this part of the crypto space and I I couldn't agree more that there's going to be enormous opportunities and growth here in the in the coming years cool amazing thank you for having me really enjoy this one byebye