Subject: Re: [bitcoin-dev] BitVM: Compute Anything on Bitcoin

From: Lloyd Fournier <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 10 Oct 2023 12:06:10 +1100

Hi Robin,

Fascinating result.
Is it possible to give us an example of a protocol that uses BitVM that
couldn't otherwise be built? I'm guessing it's possible to exchange Bitcoin
to someone who can prove they know some input to a binary circuit that
gives some output.

Thanks!

LL

On Tue, 10 Oct 2023 at 01:05, Robin Linus via bitcoin-dev <
[email-masked]> wrote:

> Abstract. BitVM is a computing paradigm to express Turing-complete Bitcoin
> contracts. This requires no changes to the network’s consensus rules.
> Rather than executing computations on Bitcoin, they are merely verified,
> similarly to optimistic rollups. A prover makes a claim that a given
> function evaluates for some particular inputs to some specific output. If
> that claim is false, then the verifier can perform a succinct fraud proof
> and punish the prover. Using this mechanism, any computable function can be
> verified on Bitcoin. Committing to a large program in a Taproot address
> requires significant amounts of off-chain computation and communication,
> however the resulting on-chain footprint is minimal. As long as both
> parties collaborate, they can perform arbitrarily complex, stateful
> off-chain computation, without leaving any trace in the chain. On-chain
> execution is required only in case of a dispute.
>
> https://bitvm.org/bitvm.pdf
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