Wyre Talks

Ep 47, Announcing tBTC with James Prestwich and Matt Luongo of Cross-Chain Group

Episode Summary

DeFi is better with Bitcoin. But there’s no way to bring BTC onto Ethereum that is censorship-resistant AND adheres to the #1 principle of Bitcoin: No printing money. Today, Cross-Chain Group founders Matt Luongo & James Prestwich join us to explain how tBTC facilitates interoperability, giving Bitcoin users access to financial services on other chains

Episode Notes

It goes without saying that DeFi is better with Bitcoin as collateral. And there is an appetite among BTC holders for ways to actively apply our money. But as of yet, there is no way to bring Bitcoin onto Ethereum that is censorship-resistant and adheres to the #1 principle of BTC: No printing money. Until now. The newly formed Cross-Chain Group is working on a project that facilitates interoperability known as tBTC Network.

Matt Luongo and James Prestwich are the crypto OGs behind tBTC, a decentralized, redeemable, BTC-backed ERC-20 token that gives Bitcoin users access to financial services on other chains. Today, they join us to discuss how their respective expertise in secure multiparty computation and stateless SPV led to their partnership on tBTC and the founding of Cross-Chain Group. Matt and James explain the technical and economic guarantees of tBTC that satisfy Bitcoin users and offer us a high-level overview of the system’s functionality, including how tBTC is minted and redeemed.

Matt and James go on to cover how tBTC signing groups are selected and how the system ensures they are behaving honestly, discussing how the network handles aborts versus fraud and its backup auction mechanism for sourcing liquidity when slashing conditions happen. They also explain their decision to launch with an authority-based price feed mechanism and later transition to a federation-based one. Listen in for insight around what the success of tBTC might mean for Ethereum and learn how Cross-Chain Group is working to further interoperability via collaboration and development in the crypto space.

Follow Thomas on Twitter: https://twitter.com/tomscaria
Follow Louis on Twitter: https://twitter.com/louAboudHogben

Follow Matt on Twitter: https://twitter.com/mhluongo
Follow James on Twitter: https://twitter.com/_prestwich
Cross-Chain Group website: https://crosschain.group