On November 13, Singapore time, the Bitcoin Next Summit hosted by Bitlayer, a Bitcoin-native second-layer project based on Bitcoin finality, was successfully concluded at the IMPACT Exhibition Center in Bangkok, Thailand. This summit gathered many first-line Bitcoin ecosystem builders and industry leaders, including StarkWare co-founder and CEO Eli Ben-Sasson, Xverse founder and CEO Ken Liao, and Lorenzo Protocol founder and CEO Matt, as well as more than 20 practitioners such as Bitlayer co-founders Kevin He and Charlie Hu, who shared their profound insights on the forefront of Bitcoin technology and the next upgrade, and deeply discussed the current landscape and development trends of BTCFi.
As the highest-profile, most influential, and most in-depth Bitcoin ecosystem summit in the Southeast Asian region recently, the Bitcoin Next Summit attracted over 2,000 users to register and participate. During the event, five in-depth roundtable discussions were held. The first two roundtables focused on Bitcoin's next upgrade, with the participating guests deeply discussing the community's hot topics, key challenges, solutions, and impacts of Bitcoin's upgrade; the last three roundtables focused on the popular narrative of BTCFi, and the guests believed that BTCFi, which has grown based on the underlying Bitcoin ecosystem, has the potential to unlock the financial potential of native BTC worth billions of dollars and become the next growth engine of the crypto economy.
With technological innovation and the increasingly prosperous on-chain ecosystem, Bitlayer is becoming a leading project in the Bitcoin-native second-layer track and an important force in driving the Bitcoin financial ecosystem. Through this Bitcoin Next Summit, Bitlayer has not only demonstrated its open and cutting-edge attitude, but also injected more possibilities into leading the future development of the Bitcoin second layer.
The Next Bitcoin Upgrade: Current Challenges and Solutions
At the beginning of the conference, Bitlayer co-founder Kevin He delivered a speech titled "A Brief Report on the Next Bitcoin Upgrade for Non-Professionals". He introduced the differences and characteristics of Bitcoin forks, soft forks, and hard forks, as well as the impact on stakeholders and the community from multiple dimensions. Kevin He pointed out that soft forks are considered a more ideal upgrade path because they can avoid the potential risk of network splits caused by hard forks and maintain the stability and credibility of the network. A successful soft fork must find the right balance between the scale of changes, potential value and risk, and the timing of implementation, while also taking into account the incentives and power of different stakeholders.
He also mentioned that different stakeholder groups, including protocol developers, investors, users, and miners, each have different motivations and influence, collectively shaping the decision-making of Bitcoin upgrades. He further pointed out that "any change to the network should uphold the core values of Bitcoin" and be implemented cautiously under a more perfect governance mechanism and appropriate timing.
Subsequently, StarkWare co-founder and CEO Eli Ben-Sasson delivered a speech titled "Starknet: Building the Most Secure Bitcoin Second Layer Network". He stated that StarkWare is at the forefront in fields such as Cairo, Stwo (STARK Two), and Bitcoin research, and StarkWare has already deployed a Stwo verifier supporting OP_CAT on the Bitcoin testnet, and has set up a $1 million research fund specifically for OP_CAT research. Furthermore, Eli Ben-Sasson emphasized that Stwo is a key advancement, featuring M31 field, GKR lookup, Mixed degree, and an improved Cairo VM, and is expected to be launched on the mainnet in Q1 2025.
The first roundtable discussion of the conference was on the topic of "Why the Next Bitcoin Upgrade is Important: Key Challenges and Solutions". Edge of Bitcoin founder Josh K served as the roundtable moderator, inviting Bitlayer co-founder Kevin He, Xverse founder and CEO Ken Liao, Hashkey Capital research head Jeffrey Hu, sCrypt co-founder and CTO Wang Yiqiang, and Scott Odell from [[alloc] init] as the discussion guests.
Among them, Hashkey Capital research head Jeffrey Hu pointed out that some people believe Bitcoin no longer needs updates, but in fact Bitcoin has introduced new signature algorithms in the past and is also constantly introducing new cryptographic primitives. Some new proposals aim to improve Bitcoin's performance and protect its security, and the community may also actively promote the progress of such proposals.
sCrypt co-founder and CTO Wang Yiqiang believes that some Bitcoin opcodes are currently disabled due to security concerns, and their existing performance cannot support more ecosystem innovations, so whether to enable certain opcodes (such as OP_CAT) to achieve more functionality has become a hot topic in the community. If these proposals are ultimately approved, it will bring more innovation to the Bitcoin ecosystem, such as BTCFi and cross-chain interoperability.
Xverse founder and CEO Ken Liao pointed out that the current Bitcoin wallet ecosystem has a lot of room for improvement. For example, as the Bitcoin layer is realized on the mainnet, providing a seamless unified experience across multiple Bitcoin second layers will be crucial. We have the opportunity to improve the fragmentation problem of the Ethereum second layer experience.
Scott Odell, a member of [[alloc] init] and the co-founder of the first protocol built using Bitcoin PIPEs, believes that the industry will soon be surprised by the actual opportunities brought by Bitcoin protocol upgrades, and these opportunities do not need to be realized through soft forks. New cryptographic technologies like Bitcoin PIPEs (see the white paper by @nemothenoone) are opening up a new field that can natively support covenants and ZKPs on Bitcoin, such as simulating missing opcodes like OP_CAT and CTV. This will spawn a whole new class of native Bitcoin applications and enhance Bitcoin's functionality and programmability, allowing various protocols to ultimately fully align and integrate with the Bitcoin L1.
The second roundtable discussion of the conference was on the topic of "From OP_CAT to OP_CTV: What Will the Next Bitcoin Upgrade Bring?". Kevin He served as the roundtable moderator, inviting discoco labs founder Ben77, L2IV research partner Weikeng Chen, and Fiamma co-founder Yovela as the roundtable discussion guests.
Among them, discoco labs founder Ben77 emphasized that improvements in Bitcoin's security and user experience are crucial, and he believes that the biggest obstacle to Bitcoin's development is speed and cost, and improving the user experience requires achieving faster and cheaper transactions.
Fiamma co-founder Yovela shared that his team is about to launch the world's first Bitcoin-secured ZK verification layer driven by BitVM2, which includes Bitcoin's first functional Groth16 and Fflonk verifiers and the first complete BitVM2 slashing mechanism, all of which were completed in August. Fiamma is developing trustless Bitcoin bridges connecting BTC L2s, ETH L2s, and various L1s, and plans to expand the application of BitVM in the future, including trustless interoperability, BRC20 zkindexers, etc. This development will make Bitcoin an indispensable dynamic asset in the future internet and financial system, applicable to all ecosystems, DApps, and real-world scenarios like daily payments.
BTCFi: Unlocking the Trillion-Dollar Bitcoin Economy
BTCFi is undoubtedly one of the hottest topics at the moment, as it marks the extension of the concept and application of decentralized finance (DeFi) to the Bitcoin network, with the potential to unlock the trillion-dollar crypto finance market.
At the Bitcoin Next Summit, Bitlayer co-founder Charlie Hu delivered a speech titled "Unlocking the DeFi Potential of the Most Secure Blockchain", in which he deeply explored the potential of the new frontiers of Bitcoin and Bitlayer's ecosystem building. Charlie Hu pointed out that Bitcoin is seen as a global financial bridge connecting institutions and retail investors, as well as the East and West. As Bitcoin's popularity and acceptance continue to grow, it is becoming an important medium for global financial exchange, promoting integration between different markets and cultures. He believes that the entire market is experiencing a transition from an institutional bull market to an on-chain retail bull market, and DeFi 2.0 will be staged in the Bitcoin ecosystem.
Charlie Hu shared Bitlayer's ecosystem building methodology with the attendees. Bitlayer's ecosystem building methodology integrates the essence of the experience accumulated by the Ethereum ecosystem over the years and the basic principles of the Bitcoin ecosystem. Specifically, Bitlayer's market strategy includes launching mining nodes, ecosystem leaderboards, gamified user centers, ecosystem project centers, BTCFi stacks, and research strategies, with a comprehensive strategy aimed at building a robust and innovative Bitlayer ecosystem that adapts to the constantly evolving market environment and user needs.
Subsequently, Charlie Hu, as the moderator, opened the third panel discussion with the theme "Why DeFi is Important for Bitcoin: Leading the Growth and Challenges of BTCFi". The panel invited BitFi CEO Han Liu, Antpool DeFi head Orlando Wang, and Glittr CEO Nick as discussion guests.
Among them, Antpool DeFi head Orlando Wang believes that BTCFi is still in a very early stage, and he believes that high trading volume is a more valuable indicator for evaluating the value of the Bitcoin on-chain ecosystem, rather than high TVL. High-value scenarios include having hundreds of millions of dollars in assets flowing on-chain, meeting user lending and other needs.
BitFi CEO Han Liu pointed out that initially, the on-chain users were mostly active users, which led to high TVL, but as time goes on, TVL no longer plays a big role, so everyone has started to change their perspective, and high TVL does not mean a successful project, user activity, trading volume and other indicators are more effective.
Immediately afterwards, the fourth panel discussion of the conference, with the theme "Exploring Bitcoin DeFi: Opportunities and Innovations Based on Holding", was moderated by Edge of Bitcoin BD manager Richard Carthon, who invited Cobo BD manager Isabella Yu, Velar CEO Mithil Thakore, Bima Labs founder Sid Sridhar, and Lorenzo Protocol founder and CEO Matt as panel discussion guests.
Among them, Bima Labs founder Sid Sridhar pointed out that there are still many hoarded BTCs that have not been activated and used, and from different perspectives, this part of BTC can be used for lending, collateralization, trading and other scenarios by supporting different wallet access products or strategies, in order to meet users' trading needs. He emphasized that security issues involving custody, collateral types, cross-chain bridges and hacker attacks are crucial.
Lorenzo Protocol founder and CEO Matt proposed that the Bitcoin staking track already has projects like Babylon that can provide BTC staking for users to earn yields, and some projects that adopt a neutral strategy and issue stBTC assets allow BTC to be used on different second-layer chains. Based on this background, the market opportunities we see include aggregators aimed at exploring yields and building multi-layer stacks.
Velar CEO Mithil Thakore believes that BTC in related applications involves assumptions about underlying security, transaction trust, and protocol risk, and his team is focused on building BTC products in a decentralized, non-custodial, and trust-minimized way, building user-facing infrastructure to ultimately benefit users in a trust-minimized manner.
Cobo BD manager Isabella Yu shared with the attendees how Cobo is promoting BTC adoption in a wider range of scenarios, as her team has already partnered with Babylon and multiple re-staking protocols, using the multi-party permission management approach of the MPC wallet to handle BTC staking, ensuring the asset security of institutional clients.
The fifth panel discussion of this summit was themed "Building the BTCFi System: Community, Collaboration and Sustainability", inviting Cointelegraph Accelerator BD assistant Max Andonov as the panel moderator, and Rooch Network founder Jolestar, Umoja Labs founder Robby Greenfield, and Pell Network co-founder Makoto as panel discussion guests.
Among them, Umoja Labs founder Robby Greenfield proposed that BTCFi currently faces problems such as limited scalability, lack of liquidity and security, making it difficult to benefit from the current largest market cap of BTC and expand in scale. If the on-chain BTC assets can be made to interact across chains with Ethereum, Solana and other blockchains, such as through LayerZero to enable lending operations between different chains, the native BTC will become more useful. His team is currently developing a protocol focused on high-yield liquidity staking token yBTC.
Pell Network co-founder Makoto shared that the challenges BTCFi products face in user adoption include differences in user profiles and changes in traditional mining profit strategies. In the process of market expansion and product acquisition, they can first promote and educate the retail user and community, and then attract institutional attention and adoption. In addition, a good marketing strategy includes concise expression, professional content marketing, and a clear and reasonable project roadmap and implementation plan.
Rooch Network founder Jolestar shared that based on his experience, for emerging crypto products to acquire a wider range of users and non-crypto users, they can simplify the product, provide free gas for users, and try to introduce traffic from social channels like Twitter and Telegram to achieve user acquisition goals.
The last session of the conference was a closing speech by Bitlayer co-founder Charlie Hu, who, after expressing his deep gratitude to all the supporters of the successful Bitcoin Next Summit, mentioned that the recent continuous breakthroughs in Bitcoin's all-time high price and the high sentiment in the crypto market will benefit many developers who have been persistently building in the Bitcoin ecosystem, who have a bright future ahead. As the Bitcoin ecosystem continues to thrive and develop, Bitlayer will witness the history and new chapters of Bitcoin together with all of you.
