In a major move towards blockchain innovation and interoperability, Cardano has announced a new partnership with BitcoinOS (BOS), a smart contract operating system for Bitcoin, the world’s first and largest cryptocurrency. The new alliance will be aimed at unlocking Bitcoin’s trillion dollar liquidity for ADA investors and creating new opportunities for cross-chain capabilities for Web3.
Cardano Announces Partnership With BitcoinOS
In an official blog post on Thursday, October 24, EMURGO, the founding entity of the Cardano blockchain revealed that it will be working with the BitcoinOS to bridge Bitcoin’s massive liquidity, worth $1.3 trillion, into Cardano’s Decentralized Finance (DeFi) ecosystem. This means that Cardano users and ADA investors will be able to directly and securely use Bitcoin’s extensive capital base in Cardano’s DeFi applications.
Expressing optimism about the new collaboration, the founder and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of EMURGO, Ken Kodama highlighted the importance of the alliance, emphasizing that BOS has the ability and potential to introduce fresh cross-chain capabilities that strengthen Cardano users, ADA investors, projects within the ecosystem, developers security, and trustless access to the Bitcoin ecosystem.
Moreover, Kodama disclosed that the partnership with BOS will further support a more accessible and interconnected Web3 environment across various blockchains, ultimately driving more innovation and adoption of DeFi and other decentralized solutions.
EMURGO has revealed that the first technical milestone in the new partnership will be the integration of the BOS Grail bridge into Cardano’s open-source blockchain ecosystem. This Grail bridge is a core technology that will facilitate secure and trustless bridging of Bitcoin and Bitcoin-based assets using BOS’ Zero Knowledge (ZK)-backed BitSNARK verification protocol.
BitSNARK is the first verification protocol to allow zk-SNARKS (Succinct Non-interactive Argument Knowledge) to run on Bitcoin with no changes to Bitcoin’s core protocol. Using this groundbreaking approach with the Grail bridge will effectively allow Bitcoin’s liquidity to flow seamlessly into Cardano’s DeFi applications, offering enhanced interoperability, and scalability.
Implications Of The New Partnership
The new partnership with EMURGO and BOS will see Cardano becoming the first ever Layer-1 blockchain to leverage BitcoinOS’s ZK-based solutions, positioning it as a key player in the DeFi ecosystem.
Moreover, through the integration of Bitcoin on Cardano, DeFi applications such as Fluid Tokens and various other DeFi platforms on the Cardano blockchain will be able to allow their users to interact directly and easily with Bitcoin. This innovative approach will significantly increase its liquidity pool and attract more users and developers into its ecosystem, potentially leading to mass adoption of the blockchain.
Moreover, Bitcoin itself is set to benefit from the EMURGO and BOS’s partnership. With BOS enabling more use cases by allowing ecosystems like Cardano to tap into Bitcoin’s liquidity through ZK proofs, Bitcoin, already the world’s most popular cryptocurrency, will become a more versatile asset, solidifying its position in the Web3 space.
Also speaking on the new collaboration, the CEO of BitcoinOS, Edam Yago mentioned that BOS’s ZK-based solutions have constantly unlocked new scaling capabilities for Bitcoin, and now it will be extending this benefit to various ecosystems beyond Bitcoin, driving more growth in the industry.
Featured image created with Dall.E, chart from Tradingview.com