Bitcoin Rails | Isabel Foxen Duke

I spend a lot of time talking about “bridging” to L2s on my podcast, so I recently spoke to Amino and Matt from Arch to talk about why it still isn’t time to stop building for Bitcoin DeFi right on Layer 1.Arch uses an entirely new VM inspired by Solana, but tailor-made to Bitcoin needs, including UTXOs and PSBTs. Arch can operate much like a traditional L2 that “bridges” funds for users, but can also allow programmable transactions to execute at the L1 level using Arch smart contracts, giving

As a full-time researcher of Bitcoin Season 2, Bitcoin Layers co-founder Yah-Noosh (Janus) is becoming cynical: “It’s all a massive shitcoin casino.”Janus sat down with me for an hour in person to discuss how his research group compares and rates the swell of Bitcoin L2s now entering the fray, ranging from lightning, to rollups, to federated sidechains. As emerging BitVM and ZK-based layers fight to gain traction while remaining decentralized, he later argued why such projects will inevitably

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

It’s now been two years since Bitcoin’s first inscription, so I caught up with Trevor Owens – Host of The Ordinal Show – to update me on what’s going on in the world of Bitcoin NFTs. While discussing his recent Pizza Pets Ordinals airdrop, Trevor recapped how Ordinals have evolved over the past two years into an NFT market that can rival Ethereum’s. In Trevor’s view, the Bitcoin bull market hasn’t even started yet. When it does, there will be an “exponential jump” of investors' interest ...

One of the most beloved educators of the "Bitcoin Renaissance," Bob and I chat about the possibilities - and limitations - of proposed L2 tech: —why the Lightning Network is not enough + proposed solutions for programmable Bitcoin—liquidity fragmention on Bitcoin metaprotocols + the need for interoperability—Bob & Isabel's shared history with ckBTC... and the underrated influence of ICP in the Bitcoin L2 space—who will realistically benefit from ZKP/BitVM style solutions (and who wil...

Lisa Neigut is the founder of Bitcoin++, co-founder of Base58, and a former Lightning Network engineer at Blockstream. In this inaugural episode of Bitcoin Rails, Lisa and I chat about the explosion of so-called "Bitcoin Layer 2s" spawning across the industry, including what defines an “L2”, and what makes some L2s better than others. We talked about some of the different types of L2s including E-Cash mints and ZK layers, and how their trust assumptions compare to existing layered solutions