Rollkit unveils infrastructure for deploying rollups on Bitcoin

The Rollkit team has built a modular framework to support rollups (rollups) on the Bitcoin blockchain.

You can now run a sovereign rollup on Bitcoin.

Announcing the first research integration of Bitcoin as a data availability layer for sovereign rollups. ?https://t.co/HpebxIz3fE

— Rollkit (@RollkitDev) March 5, 2023

“Rollkit enables developers to build rollups with arbitrary execution environments that inherit Bitcoin’s data-availability guarantees and resilience to reorgs,” the project participants noted.

According to them, the technology allows optimizing block space, reducing fees, and opening a path to DeFi solutions on the resources of the Bitcoin network.

Rollkit said the project was made possible thanks to Taproot upgrade, and the path to a solution was demonstrated by the Ordinals protocol for issuing NFT on the Bitcoin blockchain. The latter demonstrated how arbitrary data can be published in blocks. It remained only to implement two functions: submitting and retrieving rollups, the developers noted.

How did we do it? ?

Ordinals showed us it was possible to publish arbitrary data to Bitcoin. We saw this and decided to follow a similar process.

At its core, all that was needed was two functions: one to submit rollup blocks, and another to retrieve them. pic.twitter.com/u6etICUAtg

— Rollkit (@RollkitDev) March 5, 2023

Rollkit supports configurable execution environments, including EVM, CosmWasm and Cosmos SDK.

For testing the integration, the project team used a local Bitcoin testnet and Ethermint to run the EVM.

“Rollkit announced that it is releasing research tools that will enable sovereign rollups on Bitcoin’s L1 for data availability. I am excited about this development,” said Munib Ali, CEO of Blockstack.

Rollkit (@RollkitDev) announced that they’re releasing research tools to enable such sovereign rollups that benefit from Bitcoin L1 for DA. I’m excited about this development!

See this from @lightcoin: https://t.co/0VsEYDdUQe

— muneeb.btc (@muneeb) March 6, 2023

The Celestia Labs startup developed the Rollkit platform, carving it out as a standalone business line.

Back in October 2022, the company raised $55 million in a round led by Bain Capital Crypto and Polychain Capital.