I just had a mind-bending discussion with David Seroy - ecosystem lead at Alpen Labs (and fellow Bitcoin Season 2 podcast host) - about the genesis of zero-knowledge cryptography on Bitcoin. David began by unpacking the history of zero-knowledge proofs, what Ethereum has already done with them, and the potential they create for allowing “rollups” on Bitcoin - a promising solution for bringing scalability, privacy, and programmability to the original chain. David and the Alpen team are currently building Strata, a “trust-minimized” ZK-based rollup on Bitcoin. This is pretty technical stuff, but David did his best to explain words like “ZKPs” and “BitVM” for us in childspeak. If you can follow through to the end, consider yourself not a beginner anymore! https://x.com/david_seroy https://x.com/alpenlabs https://x.com/Strata_BTC TIMESTAMPS - 00:00 The “Bitcoin Season 2” Podcasters 01:50 The history of zero-knowledge proofs on Bitcoin 04:28 Privacy, SNARKs, and STARKs 06:25 What took so long to get ZKPs for Bitcoin? 08:10 Rollups VS Sidechains 09:30 Zero-knowledge proofs explained for dummies 12:00 How Ethereum laid the groundwork 13:45 Tradeoffs with trustlessness 14:55 Ethereum is still on training wheels 16:55 Bitcoin’s big unlock 19:48 BitVM: What Robin Linus figured out 21:55 BitVM2:ZK verification on L1 23:30: What is “optimistic” verification? 25:30 1-of-N: The new trust assumption for Bitcoin L2s 27:25 Making verification as efficient as possible 30:15 Normies won’t use BitVM2 bridging 32:29 Working around BitVM’s liquidity problem 35:00 The BitVM operator fee market 38:45 Rollups clear up Lightning Network’s issues 44:15 Why Alpen is not launching a token 50:00 “Tokens are f***ing brutal” 52:35 What Bitcoin maxi culture got wrong 54:55 OP_CAT making BitVM irrelevant 58:00 MEV concerns about OP_CAT are overblown 01:02:00 “Udi derangement syndrome” EPISODE SPONSORS: › Best in Slot -- https://bestinslot.xyz/ LISTEN / SUBSCRIBE TO THE PODCAST: › YouTube: / @bitcoinrails › X/Twitter: https://x.com/isabelfoxenduke CONNECT WITH ISABEL: › Email: bitcoinrails@gmail.com › LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/isabel-foxen-d… › X/Twitter: https://x.com/isabelfoxenduke#Bitcoin #Ordinals #BRC20 #Runes #BitVM #zkp