Burak, the developer who hacked Bitcoins Lightning Community with a 998-of-999 multi-signature Taproot transaction, has created a brand new Bitcoin layer 2. It has no proprietary token and doesn’t require any fork.
It’s dubbed ‘Brollups’ — a portmanteau of both ‘Burak’ and ‘rollup’ or ‘bro’ and ‘rollup.’
A rollup is a bundle of transactions that happen off-blockchain. They’re ‘rolled-up’ right into a consolidated file and mined on-chain. Also called a ‘layer 2,’ they’re primarily separate blockchains that borrow safety and worth from a base, ‘layer 1’ blockchain like Bitcoin.
Brollups don’t require a fork of Bitcoin’s consensus code. That is notable as a result of Burak has obtained donations for his work on a separate layer 2 that may require a Bitcoin fork: Ark. Particularly, Ark’s Digital Transaction Output (VTXO) tree requires an on-chain covenant to pre-determine transaction bushes.
In distinction, Brollups don’t depend on covenant operation codes like CheckTemplateVerify or TransactionHash in Bitcoin Core software program.
Burak launches new Bitcoin layer 2
Burak earned a little bit of notoriety as a Bitcoin developer on October 9, 2022. He broke LND, the most well-liked implementation of Bitcoin’s hottest layer 2, Lightning. The achievement wasn’t malicious, and he didn’t steal any cash from the stunt. As an alternative, he merely uncovered one other unintended consequence of Taproot, one in every of Bitcoin’s most intricate and counterintuitive software program upgrades.
In the course of the preliminary days of promoting Taproot, many proponents marketed its potential to allow sensible contracts on Bitcoin and in any other case deprecate options of Ethereum. In actuality, lower than 2% of Bitcoin transactions utilized Taproot till Casey Rodarmor launched his NFT and token platform Ordinals.
By Might 7, 2023, roughly 4 months because the launch of Ordinals, over three-quarters of Bitcoin transactions utilized Taproot.
By revealing the unintended penalties of Taproot, Burak grew to become a infamous developer. Because it seems, Taproot allowed a hacker to freeze 1000’s of bitcoins throughout the Lightning community.
Learn extra: Bug freezes bitcoin inside Lightning Community for hours
In an identical method, Burak is now trying to point out how Bitcoin — with none fork or covenant OpCodes — can emulate covenants.
Certainly, many rollups and layer 2s contain belief, with preliminary variations of Ethereum’s hottest layer 2s, Arbitrum and Optimism, counting on management management of personal keys over a multi-sig sensible contract.
So, if a layer 2 reintroduces belief and centralization anyway, why is a separate token like Optimism’s OP or Arbitrum’s ARB wanted in any respect?
Coinbase launched a layer 2, Base, with none proprietary token. Base depends closely on Coinbase as a trusted social gathering. Equally, Burak’s Brollups introduce belief in a small group of Brollup operators and permit low cost, quick Bitcoin transactions with out introducing any further token.
Bought a tip? Ship us an electronic mail or ProtonMail. For extra knowledgeable information, observe us on X, Instagram, Bluesky, and Google Information, or subscribe to our YouTube channel.