Simanta Gautam 🏔️

@TrustlessState @david_seroy davids' out here spilling some serious beans 😆

I record with @david_seroy about the Frontier of Bitcoin Topics so far: - Garbled circuits - Circle, Morpho, Fluid, on Bitcoin L2's - PropAMM's on Bitcoin L2's - SheidedCSV - Bitcoin-backed repo markets What do you want to know about what's being built on Bitcoin's margins?

We've successfully demonstrated garbled circuit-based verification on Bitcoin Signet. In preparation for Alpen Testnet III launch, we ran an end-to-end sequence showing how a single honest operator can protect every sat that enters Alpen. Read more ↓ mempool.space/signet/tx/89d4…

William Swanson joins Alpen Labs. Co-founder of Airbitz (now Edge), a pioneer in self-custodial Bitcoin wallets trusted by millions worldwide. Now he's helping us build what's next for Bitcoin on mobile. Unveiling 🔜.

a protocol vulnerability, like say a zkVM exploit like you described, does not imply bridge getting drained on alpen you’d have to break through several more layers of protections to steal: compromising an operator, multi-day bitcoin-enforced timelock, federated multisig that independently detects and stop malicious operator withdrawals instantly, etc. we’re working to add in even one more layer here: insurance, covered for our early users & partners. future looking: we’ve kicked off formal verification efforts on the most critical parts of the protocol. Cost to formally verify & analyze end to end will continue dropping rapidly using AI.

iirc at one point Alpen was building ontop of the SP1 verifier which had not one but *two issues* vulnerabilities allowing invalid proofs of arbitrary computations to be verified. “We found two security bugs that can be combined to perform an exploit in Succinct's SP1 zkVM, which allows you to generate false proofs. In severe cases, this could lead to loss of funds.” Quoting @fede_intern / Lamda I’m obviously a bull on zkps but how is this in anyway fud?

BitVM is awesome but it’s so damn risky. EVM Contract AND Zcash Soundness Error (alleged) bugs this week. You take on all that surface area of risk when you bridge your Bitcoin.

Congratulations to @Morpho team. Midnight enables fixed rate loans and very bespoke lending terms. Big unlock compared typical DeFi. Will be very impactful for BTC-backed loans.

@TotalWorldApps yep degen protocols always find a way xD but the gap will get more and more obvious

@simanta cost of audits down but degen protocols still find a way to blow up.

unpopular opinion: we’re about to enter a golden era of safe DeFi cost of superhuman audits, fuzzing, formal analysis & verification are rapidly collapsing it’s wild

BTC credit could compete with the Eurodollar system. → Eurodollars created a global credit layer around USD → BTC credit could create one around Bitcoin collateral A transparent, globally accessible challenger is emerging • Chapter 7 of 7

bottleneck is in context quality, not inference quality opportunity is in modeling our messy reality & translating our intents into clean prompts better judgement & taste is the final frontier

@david_seroy 😂

Ark Labs adding a ZK verify op_code and Liquid pivoting to BitVM-style bridges should tell you everything you need to know about which scaling solution is most promising.

Introducing Mosaic 💥🔫 A practical fault-proof verifier implemented in Rust, with security strong enough to host financial markets on Bitcoin. Mosaic realizes the Glock paper's vision at a low onchain cost.

@sama Hi codex, activation-patch me into this party

GPT-5.5 is going to have a party for itself. it chose 5/5 at 5:55 pm for the date and time. if you'd like to come, let us know here: luma.com/5.5 codex will help the team pick people from the replies. 5.5 had some good ideas/requests for the party, which we'll do.

@benln also Research Science Institute small high school summer camp with alums inc - founders of cursor, ramp, perplexity, pinterest, etc. - legendary scientists terrance tao, feng zhang, pardis sabeti, etc.

S-tier founder profile signals: • IMO / IPhO / IOI / ICPC medalist • Hudson River Trading intern • Thiel Fellow • ex-OpenAI, Ramp • early Stripe, Palantir

excited to support axiom’s upcoming fund as a technical advisor @allenf32 @mattkita @Big_Al256 are top notch

@david_seroy @AlpenLabs @MITBitcoinClub

BitVM4 loading… @AlpenLabs Chief Garbling Intern at @MITBitcoinClub

@apruden08 🤣 but if you tune into the signal there’s def a vibe shift: credible bitcoin wizards are increasingly seeing the value of PQ Bitcoin & working toward this. also, avihu is no random guy. he is the real deal :)

Yesterday: Quantum physicists: publish paper about breakthrough resource reduction for Shor's algorithms. Bitcoiners: It's total BS quantum is fake! Today: One random guy from Starkware: publishes paper about a possible way to do emergency PQ transactions that require a dedicated GPU and $200 (no formal security proof) Bitcoiners: Quantum is solved we're saved!

“The Plumbing of Privacy” → hear Aaron Feickert at the @MITBitcoinClub Expo this weekend. Alpen Labs returns to where our story began: MIT.

CRQC is an important enough risk to warrant more attention & resources now we’ll do our part at @AlpenLabs to ensure bitcoiners will have options most critically: any collective action for handling satoshi-era vulnerable coins must not violate bitcoin’s core principles.