Trustless Bitcoin Valets .... ( TBV )
Post
MICHAEL MOORE
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Honestly, I stopped on an example in Babylon's whitepaper that felt too clean to be the real solution.
A borrower locks BTC to borrow from a lender on Ethereum. Per the whitepaper, both sides pre-sign a set of Bitcoin transactions upfront, defining exactly when each party can claim the funds.
I expected the paper to stop there and call it solved. It does not. The next line states this pre-signing approach only works for one specific triggering event, and cannot generalize to arbitrary DeFi conditions.
That single detail is what caught me. A mechanism built to prove trustlessness immediately states, in its own words, that it only covers one specific kind of event and cannot be stretched to handle arbitrary conditions.
This is why BitVM3 exists in the design at all. Per the same document, it generalizes that idea to work against any off-chain state proof, not just one hardcoded trigger, while removing the need for a counterparty to stay online.
I sat with the order of that explanation for a while. Most versions of TBV lead straight to the finished mechanism. The whitepaper walks through the simple version, shows where it reaches its limit, then introduces the real fix.
Most summaries jump straight to BitVM3. Almost none mention what had to be left behind first. That order still feels like the most honest part of the design to me.
@BabylonLabs_io #baby $BABY
A borrower locks BTC to borrow from a lender on Ethereum. Per the whitepaper, both sides pre-sign a set of Bitcoin transactions upfront, defining exactly when each party can claim the funds.
I expected the paper to stop there and call it solved. It does not. The next line states this pre-signing approach only works for one specific triggering event, and cannot generalize to arbitrary DeFi conditions.
That single detail is what caught me. A mechanism built to prove trustlessness immediately states, in its own words, that it only covers one specific kind of event and cannot be stretched to handle arbitrary conditions.
This is why BitVM3 exists in the design at all. Per the same document, it generalizes that idea to work against any off-chain state proof, not just one hardcoded trigger, while removing the need for a counterparty to stay online.
I sat with the order of that explanation for a while. Most versions of TBV lead straight to the finished mechanism. The whitepaper walks through the simple version, shows where it reaches its limit, then introduces the real fix.
Most summaries jump straight to BitVM3. Almost none mention what had to be left behind first. That order still feels like the most honest part of the design to me.
@BabylonLabs_io #baby $BABY
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