🧙♂️【Debunking the rumor that Merlin’s technology is not good】, yesterday @MerlinLayer2 and @BTC_OS officially announced their cooperation to explore the use of ZK technology on Bitcoin for smart contracts and the construction of trustless cross-chain bridges. Let me summarize the space that both parties participated in tonight. The boss (@BitmapTech) talked a lot about Merlin’s exploration of zk technology.
Let me briefly introduce BitcoinOS. They were the first project in the world to verify ZK proofs on the Bitcoin mainnet in July. They use Taproot and ZK proofs to create smart contracts on Bitcoin, allowing off-chain calculations to be verified on the chain, enabling Bitcoin to interact with other chains in a trustless manner through Grail Bridge. Currently, they are focusing on integrating Polygon CDK with BitcoinOS, running alpha/beta tests, and conducting rigorous security audits with the Merlin team. Ultimately, they aim to build a powerful and secure system that injects confidence and releases a large amount of liquidity through Bitcoin bridging. In short, they are at the forefront of Bitcoin and zk technology.
1. Views on Trustless Cross-Chain Bridges
Yeah, I think first of all, you know, using the MPC cross-chain bridge, which is what every start-up or second-layer sidechain is using now, for me personally, it's annoying because we have to build such a huge system around it, like we have to use different solutions to cover any kind of risk, to have double insurance. We have internal and external systems to make sure that every transaction is made to the right, you know, right amount, right time, right address. So we spent a lot of money on this because the volume of transactions, you know, was beyond our imagination. So for us, we also didn't charge people a lot of fees.
It's like we're not an exchange, exchanges make perfect revenue by doing this, so they can handle this, but we can't. So I mean, for me, I think this is the worst solution for our team. And, as a user, you know, on day one, if I wanted to bridge 100 bitcoins, 200 bitcoins across chains, I would be terrified. Considering if Merlin wasn't my project, if I was an external user, I would be terrified to do this. I would ask all kinds of questions because, how do I know the money is there, even if the money is on the chain now, but how do I know if you're not going to steal my money tomorrow, and this really hurts us financially and in terms of user growth, so this is why we need it. You know, you can't imagine how much time we spent, how many solutions we looked at, how much effort we put into this.
We're working on the idea of a Bitcoin virtual machine, we've tried it in testnets, and it's expensive right now, and we've tried everything to do it. The reason we're using Polygon CDK is because it's modular. So when we find a solution that has this kind of Rollup, decentralized sorter, and zero-knowledge proofs from Polygon CDK, we can integrate it that same day. If you look at any of the other Bitcoin Ordinals, I mean, pick any Bitcoin Ordinals. They're using the OP Stack, not StarkNet, and we have 500 zero-knowledge proofs running every day, which is also a huge cost for us. So I mean, if you say who's the person who's most looking forward to this solution, it's me. So yeah, I think that answers your question pretty well.
2. Why choose zero-knowledge proof technology?
First of all, I'm not a developer, I can't go into detail about these, you know, Ethereum, OP Rollup and ZK Rollup, they have 7 days, 14 days confirmation time, which is extremely inefficient for users. If I deployed it on Bitcoin, I think that would be the worst second layer network. The second thing is zero-knowledge proofs, the reason why we run zero-knowledge proofs and pay slightly higher gas fees than OP Stack is that we compress this information into a zero-knowledge format, because we all know that putting content on Bitcoin is very expensive on a per-block basis. Now, transaction fees, gas fees are about 2 to 3, 3 to 4. But you know, when the bull market comes, gas fees are going to be very high. So on our side, we spend more resources and computing power to do this, but we compress the information as much as possible and put it on the Bitcoin layer 1 network. I think in the long run, this is the only way to go. So when we talked to other open Rollups that were trying to integrate with the Bitcoin layer 2 network, they just didn't foresee this. They didn't think so because they didn't think it would come in the short term, so they didn't do anything. But if it does come, if we can do it on the Bitcoin layer 1 network, I believe zero-knowledge proofs are the only way to do it.
3. Views on Bitcoin Core Upgrades
Based on what we've seen from developers and from external teams and from Bitcoin OS, I think the current solution does not require any upgrades to Bitcoin Core. I know personally, like I personally, not as Merlin, I personally don't want Bitcoin to have major updates because everything we're talking about right now, like Merlin and all these second layers, all these, you know, Ordinals, Rollups, is because Bitcoin is so stable, because Bitcoin is so trusted. Any changes to Bitcoin's first layer are potentially risky, you know, any changes to mobile apps are risky. So, I personally don't want Bitcoin Core to take too radical action, but I would like Rollups to be implemented on Bitcoin.
4. Outlook on attracting more Bitcoin into MerlinChain in the future
If you talk to any Ethereum holder, they are the ones who are willing to take the risk. You know, when they see any smart contract on Twitter, they just rush in, and 90% of them are scams, but for Bitcoin, if you talk to any, you know, Bitcoin, especially the whales, especially the ones who have, like, 10, 50, 10,000, even 10,000 Bitcoins, they are not going to move Bitcoin, they are unlikely to move Bitcoin because, I talked to many miners in Singapore, you know, they have been scammed many times in the past, not this year, but like in 2018, there were many projects trying to steal Bitcoin from them, and they learned their lesson. So unless everything is trustless, I think, you know, they will not move Bitcoin at all.
The above is a personal note, for sharing only, and does not constitute investment advice. If there are any errors, please correct them. #zk# #BTC# #merlin# #梅林# #bitcoinos#
