Bitlayer has finally bridged BitVM to the world stage

Since the launch of its V1 mainnet, Bitlayer reached an all-time high TVL of $850 million with over 200 dapps launched on the L2

article-image

Alfan Subekti/Shutterstock modified by Blockworks

share

Co-founders Charlie Hu and Kevin He started Bitlayer as a research-oriented passion project based on the BitVM paradigm, quickly spearheading the effort into an opportunity to unlock immense liquidity in the Bitcoin asset and ecosystem. Funnelling their extensive experience leading international teams to global success at Polygon, Polkadot, and Huobi, the two turned Bitlayer into the most relevant Bitcoin L2 in the space. 

In July 2024, Bitlayer announced its $11M Series A round led by Franklin Templeton and ABCDE. By October of the same year the team had raised an extended Series A round securing $9M more in funding, this time led by Polychain Capital.

In less than a year’s time following the raise announcements, the team at Bitlayer has made staggering progress. Since the launch of its V1 mainnet, the project reached an all-time high TVL of 850 million with over 200 Dapps launched on the L2.

Bitlayer’s ecosystem is growing and thriving with projects building Bitcoin DeFi (BTC-Fi) applications, ranging from BTC dexes, staking, restaking and liquid staking, infra, oracles, interoperability, data availability, and runes and ordinals, amongst many others. 

Recently, the team announced the first BitVM bridge solution testnet built in the Bitcoin ecosystem. 

“The bridge is an absolute necessity for Defi to happen on Bitcoin,” said Charlie Hu, Co-founder of Bitlayer. “The main differentiator when compared to previous solutions is the trust assumption. The existing multisig set-up requires the majority of signers to be honest; if it happens that the majority of signers are malicious then the bridge becomes insecure, which is what happened during some of the major hacks we’ve seen lately in the space. Our bridging solution is trust-minimized which means that only one signer needs to be honest in order for the bridge to be secure.”

The BitVM trust-minimized bridge enables the flow of bitcoin to an array of blockchains and decentralized applications. The recent announcement of Bitlayer’s partnerships with key Layer 1 blockchains such as Base, Arbitrum, Starknet, Sonic SVM, and Plume Network signal rising demand and interest. 

Now, with the imminent launch of Bitlayer Mainnet V2 in Q2 2025, Bitlayer is finally bringing BitVM to the world stage. 

The Bitlayer network’s Mainnet V2 is set to transition to a Bitcoin Rollup, a first-of-its-kind innovation in the market, bringing Bitcoin-level security to the Layer 2 ecosystem,” says Kevin He, Bitlayer Co-founder. 

BitVM allows for trust-minimized deployment of Bitcoin into a host of blockchains, DeFi protocols, and decentralized applications in order to earn yield, staking rewards, lending and borrowing features, and much more.

The BitVM paradigm does not require a fork to the Bitcoin protocol, and instead provides a technical solution built with zero-knowledge proofs, rollup architecture, and trust-minimized bridging.

Institutional investors, OGs, whales, traders, and holders can deploy their Bitcoin to earn yield rewards, in a non-custodial, trust-minimized way. And so Bitlayer continues its vision to untap Bitcoin’s full Defi potential, teaming up with clients, community, and ecosystem partners to make history for Bitcoin.

This content is sponsored and does not serve as an endorsement by Blockworks. The veracity of this content has not been verified and should not serve as financial advice. We encourage readers to conduct their own research before making financial decisions.


Get the news in your inbox. Explore Blockworks newsletters:

Tags

    Decoding crypto and the markets. Daily, with Byron Gilliam.

    Upcoming Events

    Old Billingsgate

    Mon - Wed, October 13 - 15, 2025

    Blockworks’ Digital Asset Summit (DAS) will feature conversations between the builders, allocators, and legislators who will shape the trajectory of the digital asset ecosystem in the US and abroad.

    recent research

    Unlocked by Template (10).png

    Research

    Innovations on Aptos’ technical design through Raptr, Shardines, and Zaptos approach near-optimal latency and throughput by unlocking 100% utilization of network resources, with the capacity to settle 260k transactions per second with latencies less than 800ms. The original Move language was revamped with the launch of Move 2, supporting more expressivity in smart contract logic and a scalable ability to interact with high volume datasets. The ecosystem has benefitted from strong asset inflows, now hosting over $1.3B in stablecoins, $450M in bridged BTC, and $530M in RWAs. Activity in the Aptos ecosystem has grown notably over the past year, with monthly application revenue reaching ~$835k and monthly DEX volumes growing to over $5B, both at new all time highs.

    article-image

    Interchain Labs will focus on sovereign L1s and institutional demand, abandoning plans for smart contracts on the Cosmos Hub

    article-image

    Also, only three tokens have outperformed bitcoin so far this year: XMR, HYPE and SKY

    article-image

    The fund group has submitted proposals in recent months for other funds that would hold litecoin, solana, XRP, HBAR, Sui and others

    article-image

    Momentum’s back — BTC leads, risk assets follow

    article-image

    Ondo Finance’s acquisition of blockchain development company Strangelove follows its buy of Oasis Pro

    article-image

    Cryptocurrency and stock traders alike had a lot to unpack Wednesday