BitVM: Enabling Smart Contracts on Bitcoin

BitVM is a new paradigm for Turing-complete bitcoin contracts. In this episode I speak with the creator, Robin Linus and another developer working on the idea, Super Testnet. We discuss:

• What is BitVM? 
• What are some of the trade offs? 
• What could BitVM enable? 
• Set up time and interactivity
• Can it enable sidechains or covenants? 

Links:

• Paper: bitvm.pdf
• X: @robin_linus
• X: @super_testnet
• Super Testnet’s Tapleaf circuits
• Shinobi article on BM: The Big Deal With Bitvm: Arbitrary Computation Now Possible on Bitcoin Without a Fork
• AJ Towns ML response on BitVM: BitVM: Compute Anything on Bitcoin

Sponsors:

• Swan.com (code LIVERA)
• CoinKite.com (code LIVERA)
• Mempool.space

Stephan Livera links:

• Follow me on X @stephanlivera
• Subscribe to the podcast