tzBTC
tzBTC
Get tzBTC

tzBTC 2.0: Hello World!

After quite a bit more tech-work (and development time) than initially expected, we are excited to see tzBTC 2.0 go live today Monday, May 27, 2024, 12.00 pm UTC.

tzBTC 2.0 launches feature complete, in other words exactly the way we planned and announced it in February 2024. Secured by five institutional, independent and licensed keyholders, with no fees other than gas fees and absolutely transparent, we believe that the product has the pedigree to become best in its class and we aim for nothing less than that. 

This article will explain some of our design choices for tzBTC and describe how it will impact you as a user. It will further provide information about the projects planned roadmap.

The launch in beta – what does this mean?

We launched tzBTC 2.0 with quite some tech and whilst all features were carefully reviewed by Compass and Inference we will launch the products with  care. 

Limited BTC supply in automated setup:

One of these measures is that we asked the keyholders to prepare four transactions for 10 BTC in total (1+2+2+5). When they broadcast the first message, 1 BTC will be in the automated wallet, all other BTC will remain in their current multi-sig secured location. Once the 1 BTC is used up and no issues are observed, the second transaction will be broadcasted and so on. Once the pre-signed transaction four is broadcasted, the keyholders will sign another (set) of transactions. A reassessment of the security situation will be done regularly and such an assessment may eventually end the beta phase.

  • Consequences for the user: you may have to wait in case the automated wallet is empty.
Low UTXO numbers at launch:

One other matter relates to UTXO. The pre-minted transactions and tests on the mainnet will create a limited number of UTXO in the automated wallet. One or multiple UTXO can serve a burn request. If they are “busy”, the next user will have to wait until the user in front has finished the transaction. With six BTC blocks waiting time, this may last more than one hour. This fact may create queues in the beginning but we expect that with more and more transactions (and UTXO) this bottleneck will remediate itself over time.

  • Consequences for the user: you may have to wait if there is no “free” UTXO available.
KYC terms:

KYC is a requirement for this setup that was successfully ruled and approved by the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority FINMA. There is an automated part that uses Sumsub and you will have to talk to a compliance person that will assess your identity. Once successfully done, LEXR Finance may have to finally approve your KYC and this may take more time. Institutions and individuals from certain countries are not whitelisted for Sumsub’s services. Corporates can contact LEXR or any other Gatekeeper directly. The list of countries that are exempt can be found in the terms and conditions.

  • Consequences for the user: you may have to KYC directly with LEXR or you may have to wait in case you need an additional approval.

Roadmap

In line with our initial plan, we plan to start with the work to bring tzBTC to other blockchain ecosystems. We hope we can start in June with Etherlink, Base and Binance Chain. If we start in June, our timeline is planned as follows:

June 2024
  • Requirements engineering and software requirements
  • Multichain architecture
July 2024
  • Gatekeeper user facing frontend incl. KYC, programmable BTC and EVM wallet backend
  • Documentation and unit testing
  • EVM contract development and deployment
  • Node setup
  • Keyholder setup
August 2024
  • Security reviews
  • Maintenance and Community management
  • Product integrations
September 2024
  • Go live tzBTC Multichain

Follow tzbtc.io to stay up to date with the latest tzBTC news.