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bip-300

Botanix Labs founder Willem Schroé argues a “huge amount of value” from real-world assets will be captured on Bitcoin, provided it connects to the Ethereum Virtual Machine.

Mainstream Bitcoin (BTC) adoption won’t happen until it bridges to the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) — the first point of entry for many real-world assets moving on-chain, a Web3 executive argues.

Speaking to Cointelegraph, the founder of cross-chain infrastructure firm Botanix Labs, Willem Schroé, claimed Bitcoin “needs to start playing in the EVM world” for it to build real-world use cases to increase its adoption and utility.

“Bitcoin is the most technologically secure and truly decentralized protocol [and] the EVM has proven itself to be the application layer for the global financial system,” Schroé said.

Our Botanix Protocol positions Ethereum as a Layer-2 solution on top of #Bitcoin.

We've added Ethereum onto the Bitcoin Network's secure foundation to harness the security of its Proof-of-Work mechanism.

Also, enjoy the developmental ease of Ethereum.
— Botanix Labs (@BotanixLabs) September 25, 2023

While Bitcoin is typically used as a peer-to-peer payment system or for storing value, Schroé said its potential won’t be fulfilled unless the cryptocurrency can connect to the broader financial system, such as with security and commodity markets.

Connecting Bitcoin to Ethereum-based real-world assets, stablecoins, decentralized finance and nonfungible tokens via the EVM is the first step in that direction, Schroé argued.

“That’s a huge amount of value and development waiting to happen.”

Schroé’s Botanix Labs aims to connect the Bitcoin and Ethereum ecosystems through its “Spiderchain” — a proof-of-stake layer 2 that implements EVM to EVM bridges to enable Bitcoin to interact with the EVM.

Bitcoin and Ethereum may seem like opposites, but they can co-exist and complement each other.

However, this does present some challenges.

Multi-chain ecosystems with cross-chain bridges can have security and centralization risks, hindering the potential of collaboration.
— Botanix Labs (@BotanixLabs) October 2, 2023

Staked assets are secured by a decentralized multisignature mechanism, and its design doesn’t require Bitcoin to be forked.

Schroé believes the current solutions involving wrapped Bitcoin on Ethereum and other EVM-compatible chains are problematic and argues they are susceptible to censorship and regulatory scrutiny, as they’re operated by the centralized United States-based company BitGo.

A similar proposal to bring Ethereum functionality to Bitcoin is also being proposed through “drivechains,” also known as the Bitcoin Improvement Proposal-300, which Bitcoin developers are again discussing. If implemented, it would allow “sidechains” to be built on the network.

On Oct. 9, Bitcoin developer Robin Linus released a white paper titled “BitVM: Compute Anything on Bitcoin,” which details how Ethereum-like optimistic rollup smart contracts could be made on the Bitcoin network.

Unlike the Spiderchain, BIP-300 would require Bitcoin to soft fork and would be activated by miners — similar to the Taproot soft fork in November 2021 that paved the way for the NFT-emulating Ordinals and BRC-20 tokens.

The BIP’s creator, Paul Sztroc, says those favoring BIP-300 believe it will offer new privacy and scaling use cases to Bitcoin, among other benefits.

So far at @tabconf:

* Many pro Bip300 -- popular usecases are Privacy, Scaling, and experimentation (get new OP codes now)
* Very popular question is: when is my debate with Peter Todd (Friday at 2 PM)
* Many complained about off-base Twitter dialog and nonsense propaganda
*…
— Paul Sztorc (@Truthcoin) September 7, 2023

However, not everyone likes the idea of expanding Bitcoin’s ecosystem beyond its current use cases.

Cory Klippsten, the CEO of BTC-only exchange Swan Bitcoin, believes drivechains and solutions that bring other assets to Bitcoin will bring an influx of scammers.

Saifedean Ammous, the author of The Bitcoin Standard, opposes the idea of issuing altcoins on Bitcoin, suggesting that “good money” is the only token needed.

People only think tokens are a good idea because we live in a world of broken money. A good money is the only token anyone ever needs. Bitcoin is going to detokenize the world. https://t.co/q8Nhc7XcOX
— Saifedean Ammous (@saifedean) August 28, 2023

However, Schroé said he thinks bringing together Bitcoin and Ethereum could produce a new array of applications “with decentralization and security as first principles.“

“EVM is the winning virtual machine, and Bitcoin is the best money,” he said.

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Starknet moves closer to EVM compatibility with upcoming ‘Kakarot’ testnet

June 22, 2023 Coin Telegraph

Coin Telegraph

With fresh funding under its belt, a new zkEVM is set to go to testnet in August, allowing developers to write in any EVM-compatible language on Starknet.

Starknet, a zero knowledge layer-2 scaling solution for Ethereum is one step closer to becoming fully Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) compatible pending an August testnet launch of Kakarot, a new zkEVM.

On June 3, the Kakarot team announced it had received new backing from Ethereum cofounder Vitalik Buterin, Ledger co-founder Nicholas Bacca and Starkware.

We have powered up and entered Super Saiyan mode⚡. Kakarot Labs has officially been incorporated and closed a pre-seed round with top-tier investors.

Let’s unpack our vision, current standing, and the exciting future ahead. pic.twitter.com/VI8QRdPLfw
— Kakarot zkEVM (@KakarotZkEvm) June 2, 2023

In an interview with Cointelegraph, Kakarot CEO and Co-Founder Elias Tazartes explained that while Starknet stands as a leading Zero Knowledge roll-up in the Ethereum ecosystem, it's not EVM compatible, so there’s “kind of a barrier to entry.”

Starknet is used by developers to scale decentralized applications, transactions and computation on Ethereum, but uses its own native language Cairo. According to Starknet, the use of Cairo makes it easier and faster to develop, review and maintain new code.

The downside is that it isn’t EVM compatible, which could dissuade some developers.

“The greatest impact that Kakarot can have is to make Starknet EVM compatible.”

“Kakarot right now is like a Solidity or any language engine. Eventually you will be able to put that engine within Starknet to make it EVM compatible.”

At present, Starknet runs its own custom smart contract Virtual Machine dubbed “Cairo VM” that leverages its native coding language Cairo. This means that Starknet doesn’t have direct EVM compatibility out of the box, something that could prove to be a significant hurdle for overall rollup performance.

“Some teams really need to be able to use Solidity. For example, if someone wrote a DEX or an AMM for the Ethereum ecosystem and now has 60,000 lines of code already audited, ready to go, but it’s only on EVM chains.”

If these developers wanted to start using Starknet they would have to hire a whole new dev team, write in, audit the code again and maintain two code bases, becoming what Tazartes describes as “prohibitively expensive.”

According to Tazartes, the idea for the zkEVM was first floated during a Starkware conference in July 2022. By October, the development team was able to together for a week during a hacker house event in Lisbon, Portugal to get cracking on the new zkEVM.

Two months and 20 days later in December, the coding for the project was complete, arriving at a fully functional execution layer — all of which was achieved without any venture funding.

Notably, Tazartes said that Ethereum cofounder Vitalik Buteirn later invested in Kakarot due to his enthusiasm toward a multiple-zkEVM approach to building out the Ethereum ecosystem.

“For Vitalik, the more zkEVMs the better, because as long as you have a wide diversity of architecture and diversity of approaches…then this is really good for the space as a whole.”

Tazartes shared that the testnet version of Kakarot will be launched for public use in August this year.

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