DFINITY R&D Team Announces BTC-ICP Integration Beta Release

Ultimately, advanced and sophisticated smart contracts will be available for Bitcoin. The straightforward inclusion of the Web Desktop with the Bitcoin blockchain, which does away with the need for a reliable middleman or overpass, has been made public by the DFINITY R&D team as a beta release. With the integration’s APIs, devs can actually build and start running tests right away.

With quick final judgment and reduced transaction fees, this historic moment paves the pathway for a successful general availability (GA) rollout in the upcoming months that will bring innovative smart contract functionality for Bitcoin on the massively scalable Internet Computer blockchain. 

The IC’s goal is to create a strong general-purpose blockchain that is accessible, safe, and expandable, and this step is part of a larger roadmap to incorporate the IC with current systems and achieve that goal.

The Beta Version of the BTC<>ICP Integration Features:

• For the creation and pre-production testing of canister smart contracts using Bitcoin, an experimental Bitcoin Testnet integration API is available. (Same API as the soon-to-be-released GA version.)
• a threshold ECDSA provision with a test key,** which claims to support seamless integration with the Ethereum platform in addition to other blockchains that employ the ECDSA scheme.
• Documentation.
• Motoko and Rust canister deployment sample code.

Lately, there have been multiple instances of blockchain bridges getting infiltrated, leading to significant failures and misuses. This direct Bitcoin integration’s trustlessness, or the absence of any additional trust presumptions beyond those arising from the inherent characteristics of the Bitcoin blockchain and the Internet Desktop, is a crucial feature. There are no solitary failure points in the execution because no extra stakeholders are needed that must be trusted for the integration’s accessibility or safety.

Through the regulation of ECDSA signing keys, the Bitcoin integration helps Internet Computer containers to store Bitcoin addresses and serve as wallets that can store, obtain, and submit Bitcoin. Smart contracts for Bitcoin can be created in a secure environment and retain one‘s own natively encrypted Bitcoin keys.

This opens up new opportunities for Bitcoin use cases, such as decentralized applications like Spinner that support private Bitcoin transactions utilizing 0-knowledge documentary evidence and social channels like OpenChat that enable users to send Bitcoin via instant messenger.

The characteristics of the Internet Computer’s Btc incorporation will end up making it a premier Bitcoin-integrated DeFi basis, boosting the value and functionality of the current DeFi eco-system while unveiling a new wave of initiatives leveraging Bitcoin liquidity such as InfinitySwap, Sonic, and ICPSwap. 

Because of the Internet Computer’s straightforward and trust-free assimilation, Bitcoin crypto loaning, for instance, would be feasible in a greater trust value than is offered on some other platforms, making it an obvious selection for DeFi devs. Overall, BTC has the potential to overtake ICP as one of the most widely used tokens on the Internet Computer.

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