Last Week in Bitcoin (Sep 1-7, 2025)Another @tuma weekly report, highlighting what happened at the bitcoin++ in Istanbul about Bitcoin scaling solutions. Here below the summary of the highlights of what developers and researchers have been working on, and presenting next-generation Bitcoin technologies. I was surprised to see what was presented. No mention Lightning.
Major Technology Developments
BitVM and Zero Knowledge Proofs
- Primary Focus: Improved bridging solutions between Bitcoin and sidechains/rollups using Zero Knowledge Proofs (ZKPs)
- BitVM Family: Multiple projects working to bring Bitcoin into decentralized finance (DeFi) applications
- Important Note: Many projects claiming to use "ZK" technology aren't actually implementing true zero-knowledge proofs
Garbled Circuits - The Game Changer
- Revolutionary Optimization: Garbled Circuits emerged as a key innovation for BitVM implementations
- Technical Breakthrough:
- Current BitVM2 SNARK verifiers: ~4MB (size of entire Bitcoin block)
- New Garbled Circuit verifiers: ~70KB (100x improvement)
- Future Development: Teams planning migration to BitVM3 implementations using Garbled Circuits
Ark Protocol
- Core development teams presented Ark's scaling advantages and trade-offs
- Multiple discussions on how Ark could enhance Bitcoin scalability
Conference Resources
Video Content
- Day 1 Presentations: YouTube Stream
- Day 3 Presentations: X/Twitter Broadcast
Hackathon Results
Competition Details
- Prize Pool: 5M satoshis
- Duration: 3-hour intensive development sprint
- Participants: 9 Bitcoin-focused teams
- Judging Criteria: Olympic gymnastics scoring system (difficulty, execution, overall effect)
Winners
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🥇 First Place: Artmak
- Ark-based wallet implementation
- Demonstrated Ark scalability testing
- Also won "Best Design" award
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🥈 Second Place: CoreLLM
- AI agent trained on Bitcoin codebase
- Designed to help junior developers learn Bitcoin development
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🥉 Third Place: ZKPoor
- Privacy-focused proof-of-reserves tool
- Cryptographic verification without revealing addresses or UTXOs
Special Recognition Awards
- Best Use of STARKs: Bridgestr
- Reality-Check Award: MergeSyncPi
Technical Resources
BitVM Documentation
- BitVM: Official Website
- BitVM2: Documentation
- BitVM3: Research Paper
Related Links
- Hackathon Projects: DevPost Competition
- ZK Explainer Thread: Twitter Discussion
Research Topics Discussed
- Bitcoin as base layer for peer-to-peer credit systems
- Bitcoin quantum computing considerations
- Privacy improvements through BitVM implementations
- Scaling solutions beyond traditional approaches