Bitcoin research expands on design space for smart contracts

BitVM paper shows how Bitcoin can anchor off-chain smart contracts, but with caveats The most popular smart contract solutions in crypto are based on Ethereum, which provides a decentralized Turing-complete virtual machine.

Bitcoin’s primary use case is as a store of value — digital gold — and, to a lesser extent, for payments, exemplified by the Lightning Network.

But new research shows how Taproot, Bitcoin’s 2021 scripting upgrade, can dramatically increase the theoretical capabilities of the chain, potentially making it far more useful, even with no additional changes.

A paper published by Robin Linus, whose non-profit ZeroSync recently completed a key component of a future zero-knowledge light client for Bitcoin, describes a so-called “BitVM” — which can be read as “Bitcoin Virtual Machine.”