Bitcoin developers seek to extend the decentralized blockchain (DEFI) financing capacities are likely to consider evidence of zero knowledge (ZK), features that are not currently available and which require a so-called sweet fork or a new version of the software, to present them.
This is a problem, according to Edan Yago, a Bitcoin veteran over a decade and basic contributor to the Smart Contract Bitcoinos (BOS) operating system.
“Making a blockchain, in particular one with 2 billions of dollars of value on this subject, is like an open heart surgery,” Yago told Coindesk in an interview “Hard Forks is obviously much more problematic, but I think that the introduction of all kinds of fork is heavy.”
A fork is a change in the code of a blockchain which requires a divergence at a certain point on a separate path. The forks can be “soft”, which means that older versions can always interact with the news, or “hard”, which make older versions incompatible and require that all users upgrade their software.
ZK evidence is a cryptographic method to prove the validity of statements while maintaining confidentiality by revealing any information on this subject. The functionality is not available in Bitcoin software, but could be carried out through implementations offered as OP_CAT and OP_CTV. Yago said developers should be able to find ways to allow them on Bitcoin without any kind of fork.
“The burden of evidence is the responsibility of the developers to demonstrate that there is no other way to accomplish it by intelligent engineering,” he said.
This is what BOS hopes to achieve through the Bitsnark, a Rollup Bitcoin protocol which is part of the family of computer paradigms under development to evolve the original blockchain. These emerged following the introduction of Bitvm by Robin Linus in October 2023, which established a framework for how intelligent contracts of the Ethereum type could be activated on Bitcoin.
Bitcoinos has now open source what Yago describes as a bitsnark protocol “fully ready for production”, which means that developers now have access to ZK on Bitcoin verification and can connect it to other blockchains like Ethereum, Solana and Cardano.
Bitsnark allows developers to take large complex programs and prove the results of the calculations in just 300 bytes which can be verified in standard Bitcoin transactions. This could open the way to BTCFI, a term used for DEFI on Bitcoin, by allowing transverse bridges, decentralized exchanges and stable -co -poles with Bitcoin files (BTC).
Although there are many projects that seek to introduce decentralized finances on Bitcoin, they rely on the use of OP_CAT or OP_CTV codes, which require a fork in the blockchain software. Yago wants to reach the same destination via a different route.
