Everything Bitcoin on ICP: Dive into Projects Building with native BTC Integration

Native Bitcoin integration on ICP allowed developers all across the globe to unleash new possibilities. From using ordinals as collateral to enabling satoshis to be sent via chat messages — the BTC<>ICP integration helped activate Bitcoin economy.

This blog post gathers insights from this special edition of Chugga Chugga Bitcoin and looks at how 11 different dapps that have built upon this native integration fuel the Bitcoin economy. But first, let’s check out how ICP’s vision of Bitcoin integration came to life.

How the Bitcoin Integration came to life in 2022

Aligning with the ethos of decentralization, the Internet Computer (ICP) laid the technological ground to host software and systems that interact with the internet in a completely decentralized fashion.

The special edition gives a great perspective on how the idea turned into reality,

“If we want to host smart contracts that serve the world and the internet, the first step is to talk — to be able to read and write to the Bitcoin blockchain. This was the first big leap into the interoperability of ICP.”

In 2022, ICP launched Bitcoin integration allowing ICP nodes to read the Bitcoin UTXO set and implemented ECDSA to enable signing Bitcoin transactions directly.

About the Bitcoin integration going live in 2022 from Chugga Chugga Bitcoin,

“We mentioned that Bitcoin integration went live in 2022. Everyone’s jaw dropped because, really, that wasn’t a popular idea back then. People weren’t all that interested in building on Bitcoin. But our integration went live — perfect timing, because that’s when the light bulb went off for everyone. Now, that kind of brings us to where we are at present.”

Why ICP is the best choice to build on Bitcoin: Projects activating Bitcoin economy

It has been over two years since the launch of Bitcoin integration and with it the opportunity to build on Bitcoin. It opened doors for decentralized applications to start direct, protocol-level integration with the BTC network. This unlocked new possibilities — from swapping BTC and ETH using their chain-key versions on decentralized exchanges (DEXs) to the ability to perform Bitcoin microtransactions with negligible transaction fees. Some great use cases are being built using this stack across verticals, we cover some examples here:

Mining — Loka Mining

Bitcoin mining has largely evolved over the years. Andy from Loka Mining says “Back in 2014, you could mine your laptop or base computer. Now, it is a huge industry and getting more centralized. Two biggest mining pools accumulate more than 50% total hashrate in the world”.

Loka Mining, a meta layer with a native yield protocol for Bitcoin built on ICP, offers a trust-minimized approach to Bitcoin miners unlocking key benefits for Bitcoin holders, miners, and investors.

For Bitcoin holders, Loka Mining allows them to leverage their BTC to earn native yield from the Bitcoin mining economy. Secondly, for Bitcoin miners, Loka provides the opportunity to sell their future mining rewards. And for investors it offers the chance to buy Bitcoin at a lower-than-market price. By participating in the Loka Mining’s ecosystem, investors can essentially purchase Bitcoin at a discounted rate, thanks to the ability to acquire future mining rewards at a reduced price.

BTC Staking and Runes — Omnity

Omnity, rebranded from Octopus, is leveraging Bitcoin native integration of ICP to add token capabilities to its existing infrastructure. Louis from Omnity states that “Bitcoin native integration supports BTC itself, and there are tons of new assets showing up. We built a new tensor to be the on-chain indexer for all kinds of new tokens, first runes, and then incorporate BRC20 tokens, and others.”

In addition, Omnity also leverages the BTC native integration to introduce a new approach to BTC staking and will ensure security for Bitcoin layer-2s and sidechains. Converted to ckBTC the assets will be securely locked into a staking canister which holds the power to burn or slash BTC in the event of malicious activity. Operators who are willing to run nodes will be assigned voting rights. In the event of any dishonest activity detected by the operator, the protocol will burn or lock a portion of ckBTC ensuring the integrity and security of the network.

SocialFi — Catalyze One

Catalyze One is a socialfi application which focuses on building communities and facilitating interactions within them. The platform allows users to tip each other, pay for services, and support various projects.

Here’s what Ray Laracuenta from Catalyze One says about what the project has been doing in the space and how they are going to use ckBTC and native integration “When you build communities, you’ve got to hire developers, graphic designers, and build an entire ecosystem of support for your platform. And they’re going to come from all walks of life and there are different currencies that they want to be paid in, they want to be invoiced in. We’re looking at Bitcoin and ckBTC as methods to provide economy to those communities”.

Catalyze is also working on a Nostr Relay, called Replicator, with the support of the DFINITY grants team, addressing scaling and discoverability challenges by leveraging the Internet Computer (IC). This integration will enable users to run a Nostr relay, bridging different ecosystems and supporting all Nostr clients.

DeFi — Helix Markets

Helix Markets, a new type of order book DEX built on ICP, strives to offer the best experience of both centralized and decentralized exchanges. That is the simplicity and ease of use of centralized exchanges coupled with the ability to give users complete control over their assets.

Helix Markets aims to create a seamless multi-chain trading experience, leveraging the infrastructure of IC to make it possible.

Here’s what Gorazd has to say about why he is building a DEX on IC with native integration:

“With Chain Fusion, we were able to bring light and fast trading without using any bridges, any middlewares — it’s all native transactions, native chain interactions that run through our canister smart contracts on IC. All the transactions, blockchain, and gas complexities are handled by our smart contracts — so users don’t have to worry about complex onboarding, managing browser wallets, etc. And that we have reverse gas, which is one of the most underrated aspects of IC. It just offers a really nice way to build great UI and UX without worrying about gas handling, which is done by the canister itself.”

Ordinals — Bioniq

The integration allows developers to inscribe ordinals without any custodial bridges, 1.5 second finality, negligible fees, and most importantly it enables an infrastructure for any developer to build a secured app right now.

Bioniq is a marketplace that uses Bitcoin as a layer-2 to sell, trade, and transfer Bitcoin ordinals and inscriptions without gas fees and with a transaction speed less than two seconds. Max Ogles from Bioniq says “When you interact with ordinals on our marketplace, they’re wrapped ordinals — so you can get benefits such as transact a lot more easily, quicker and with almost no fees when you trade on our marketplace”.

Bioniq has also recently introduced dynamic ordinals adding an exciting dimension to the overall experience. With dynamic ordinals, users can engage in gaming to upgrade their recently launched Motoko Sentinels. In addition, Bioniq also plans to integrate Bitcoin Runes into its ecosystem.

What’s Next?

ICP is far from done.

“Threshold Schnorr is the next installment of our Bitcoin integration and Chain Fusion tech, allowing the signing of tSchnorr transactions. This is another signature scheme that enables sophisticated operations introduced with the Taproot update, such as inscribing ordinals more efficiently and allowing trading or some type of signature scheme. These additional functionalities in Bitcoin mean that smart contracts will be able to execute such operations in a decentralized way. And you know what that means — it brings programmability and all the operations of DeFi to Bitcoin as well”

We also spoke with the leaders from projects Chain Key X, NFID Vaults, Tyron.io, and CB Index Finance to get their unique perspective on the overall space and how the Bitcoin integration is helping build their product.

Check out the entire conversation in this edition of Chugga Chugga Bitcoin!

Learn More:

Bitcoin Integration : https://internetcomputer.org/bitcoin-integration

How ICP’s Bitcoin Integration Secures Private Keys

Why Bitcoin needs smart contracts

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Everything Bitcoin on ICP: Dive into Projects Building with native BTC Integration was originally published in The Internet Computer Review on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.