BTC<>ICP Integration Beta Release: The Bitcoin Testnet API Is Now Available
The BTC integration allows canister smart contracts to leverage the world’s largest cryptocurrency, enabling new DeFi and dapp use cases.
Advanced smart contracts are finally coming to Bitcoin. The DFINITY R&D team has announced the beta release of the Internet Computer’s direct integration with the Bitcoin network, which eliminates any reliance on a trusted intermediary or bridge. Developers can immediately begin testing and building with the integration’s APIs.
This milestone paves the way toward a successful general availability (GA) release in the coming months, delivering innovative smart contract functionality for Bitcoin on the highly scalable Internet Computer blockchain, with fast finality and low transaction cost. It is part of a broader roadmap to integrate the IC with existing systems, fulfilling its mission to provide a powerful general-purpose blockchain that is open, secure, and scalable.
The Bitcoin integration beta release includes:
- An experimental Bitcoin Testnet integration API for the development and pre-production testing of canister smart contracts using bitcoin. (Same API as that of the upcoming GA release.)
- A threshold ECDSA deployment with a test key,** a standalone feature that supports the Bitcoin integration as well as integrations with other blockchains that use the ECDSA scheme, such as Ethereum.
- Documentation:
— https://internetcomputer.org/docs/current/developer-docs/integrations/bitcoin/
— https://internetcomputer.org/docs/current/developer-docs/integrations/t-ecdsa/ - And sample code for deploying canisters in Motoko and Rust.
**Please note that the test key of the current deployment is intended solely for development and testing purposes, e.g., to hold bitcoin on Bitcoin Testnet, and may be deleted in the future. We strongly discourage attaching any real-world value to this experimental test key.
No Bridges
There have recently been numerous incidents of blockchain bridges being compromised, resulting in substantial exploits and losses. An essential attribute of this direct Bitcoin integration is that it is “trustless,” dispensing with additional trust assumptions apart from the inherent properties of the Bitcoin network and the Internet Computer. The implementation does not require any additional parties that need to be trusted for security or for the integration’s availability, and therefore does not have single points of failure.
The Bitcoin integration enables Internet Computer canisters to hold bitcoin addresses and function as wallets that can hold, receive, and send bitcoin by controlling ECDSA signing keys. Bitcoin smart contracts can be securely developed around native bitcoin, and can hold their own bitcoin keys natively and securely. This opens up new possibilities for use cases involving bitcoin, such as social platforms like OpenChat allowing users to transfer bitcoin via instant message and dapps like Spinner supporting private bitcoin transactions using zero-knowledge proofs.
BTC-based DeFi
The properties of the Internet Computer’s Bitcoin integration will make it a premier foundation for DeFi that incorporates bitcoin, enhancing the functionality and value of the existing DeFi ecosystem while unleashing a wave of new projects leveraging bitcoin liquidity, such as InfinitySwap, Sonic, and ICPSwap. Bitcoin crypto lending, for example, would be possible in a stronger trust model than is available on other platforms thanks to the Internet Computer’s direct and trustless integration, making it a natural choice for DeFi developers.
Overall, BTC could become one of the major tokens on the Internet Computer besides ICP to be used for any conceivable use case.
Next Steps
In addition to the above, the GA release that is currently in development will include the introduction of ckBTC, a form of advanced wrapped BTC on the Internet Computer that is obtained natively through the direct integration, which can be processed with the low transaction fees and finality times of the Internet Computer.
The ckBTC ledger effectively holds (controls) its own native BTC private key, but the key as a whole is not available to anyone or any code. Key shares are held by the nodes of the subnet, and transactions are signed using threshold signing. This allows users to obtain wrapped BTC in a manner that does not require additional trust assumptions — just another aspect that distinguishes the Internet Computer from conventional blockchains.
As the Bitcoin integration approaches full implementation, the DFINITY R&D team will continue to update the community on our progress and timeline. We truly can’t wait to see what the developer community builds using the Internet Computer’s Bitcoin integration!
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