The renowned Bitcoin developer, known for exploiting a bug in the Lightning Network that led to an emergency update in 2022, is currently working on a new Bitcoin layer 2 solution with the aim of expanding the potential use cases for decentralized finance (DeFi) on the Bitcoin network.
The developer, also known as “Burak,” who previously launched a competing platform called Ark Protocol, has now introduced “Brollups.” This layer 2 solution utilizes a Bitcoin-native rollup design, enabling the bundling of transactions without the need for a Bitcoin hard fork or the creation of a non-Bitcoin token, as explained by Burak.
Although Brollups is still in the design phase, Burak mentioned in a Medium post on June 21 that there could be a signet (testnet) rollout later this year. Once fully launched, Brollups aims to support over 90% of DeFi use cases, according to Burak.
Burak emphasized that Brollups is deeply integrated into Bitcoin and functions naturally with Bitcoin as a payment construct. The management of Brollups will be handled by “operators” who will provide liquidity to the protocol and advance the rollup state by chaining Bitcoin transactions at regular intervals. These transactions will be executed on the Bitcoin Virtual Machine.
Burak received significant recognition from the Bitcoin community for developing this solution without the need for a Bitcoin hard fork or the creation of a new token.
In October 2022, Burak gained attention for exploiting the Lightning Network with a 998-of-999 multisignature Taproot transaction. This exploit resulted in an emergency update for Lightning Network node operators, as it caused all nodes to temporarily fall out of sync. While no funds were stolen in the transaction, which incurred a mere $5 transaction fee, it highlighted an unintended consequence of the Taproot upgrade, according to industry experts at the time.
Taproot transactions saw minimal usage until January 2023 when Casey Rodarmor introduced the Ordinals protocol. By December 2023, Taproot transactions made up a record 46.4% of all Bitcoin transactions. However, this percentage has since declined to 30% this month, as shown by a Dune Analytics dashboard from Data Always.
Other Bitcoin scaling projects such as Drivechain and Spiderchain are also focused on bringing DeFi functionality to the Bitcoin network.
In May 2022, Burak launched Ark, a Bitcoin layer-2 solution primarily focused on payments, which eliminates the need for payment channels.
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