Bridging Bitcoin to Second Layers via BitVM2

Woll, Robin Linus; Aumayr, Lukas; Avarikioti, Zeta; Maffei, Matteo; Pelosi, Andrea; Thyfronitis Litos, Orfeas Stefanos; Stefo, Christos; Tse, David; Zamyatin, Alexei

doi:10.34726/12785

Record link:

http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12708/231404
https://doi.org/10.34726/12785

Title:

Bridging Bitcoin to Second Layers via BitVM2

Citation:

Woll, R. L., Aumayr, L., Avarikioti, Z., Maffei, M., Pelosi, A., Thyfronitis Litos, O. S., Stefo, C., Tse, D., & Zamyatin, A. (2026). Bridging Bitcoin to Second Layers via BitVM2. In Proceedings of the 35th USENIX Security Symposium (pp. 969–988). https://doi.org/10.34726/12785

reposiTUm DOI:

10.34726/12785

CatalogPlus:

AC18056468

Publication Type:

Inproceedings - Full-Paper Contribution

Language:

English

Authors:

Woll, Robin Linus
Aumayr, Lukas
Avarikioti, Zeta
Maffei, Matteo
Pelosi, Andrea
Thyfronitis Litos, Orfeas Stefanos
Stefo, Christos
Tse, David
Zamyatin, Alexei

Organisational Unit:

E192-06 - Forschungsbereich Security and Privacy
E056-10 - Fachbereich SecInt-Secure and Intelligent Human-Centric Digital Technologies
E056-13 - Fachbereich LogiCS
E056-26 - Fachbereich Automated Reasoning

Published in:

Proceedings of the 35th USENIX Security Symposium

ISBN:

978-1-939133-58-8

Date (published):

2026

Event name:

35th Usenix Security Symposium (USENIX Security '26)

Event date:

12-Aug-2026 - 14-Aug-2026

Event place:

Baltimore, MD, United States of America (the)

Number of Pages:

Keywords:

Bitcoin; BitVM; Light client; Bridge; Rollup; Blockchain

Abstract:

A holy grail in blockchain infrastructure is a trustless bridge between Bitcoin and its second layers or other chains. We make progress toward this vision by introducing the first light-client-based Bitcoin bridge. At its heart lies BITVM2-CORE, a novel paradigm that enables arbitrary program execution on Bitcoin, combining Turing-complete expressiveness with the security of Bitcoin consensus. BITVM2-BRIDGE advances prior approaches by reducing the trust assumption from an honest majority (t-of-n) to existential honesty (1-of-n) during setup. Liveness is guaranteed with only one rational operator, and any user can act as a challenger, enabling permissionless verification. A production-level implementation of BITVM2 has been developed, and a full challenge verification has been executed on the Bitcoin mainnet.

Project title:

Foundations and Tools for Client-Side Web Security: 771527 (Europäischer Forschungsrat (ERC))
Semantische und kryptografische Grundlagen von Informationssicherheit und Datenschutz durch modulares Design: F 8500 (FWF - Österr. Wissenschaftsfonds)
Blockchaintechnologien für das Internet der Dinge: CDL-BOT (Christian Doppler Forschungsgesells)
Scalable, Private, and Interoperable Layer 2: ICT22-045 (WWTF Wiener Wissenschafts-, Forschu und Technologiefonds)

Project (external):

Ministero dell’Università e della Ricerca (MUR)
Input Output (https://iohk.io)
Stanford IOG Blockchain Research Hub

Project ID:

352/2022

Additional information:

https://www.usenix.org/conference/usenixsecurity26/presentation/woll?utm_source

Research Areas:

Logic and Computation: 100%

Science Branch:

1020 - Informatik: 100%

License:

In Copyright