OptiMine Empowers Rollups with Bitcoin Security via New Security Building Block

'Build on Bitcoin' (BOB), the Layer 2 stack developed by the team behind leading Bitcoin DeFi platform Interlay, today announced OptiMine, an enhanced Bitcoin security feature for blockchains.

OptiMine is a security building block that brings Bitcoin PoW security to L2s, including ETH rollups and Bitcoin sidechains, while retaining high performance and throughput. It brings a new dimension of crypto economic security to the industry, combining the robustness of Bitcoin's Proof-of-Work (PoW) with the flexibility and scalability of Ethereum and other EVM-compatible blockchains.

“OptiMine allows us to enhance L2 solutions with Bitcoin’s PoW security, offering a powerful tool to make rollups more robust and reduce trust in Sequencers.” said BOB’s co-founder, Alexei Zamyatin. “You can think of OptiMine as Bitcoin’s answer to Ethereum’s restaking, aligning miners with the upcoming wave of Bitcoin L2s”.

The protocol has been developed in collaboration with a leading Bitcoin mining company, underlining the importance of L2 solutions for the Bitcoin mining community.

The Technological Breakthrough of OptiMine

OptiMine introduces a novel hybrid consensus technique called “Optimistically Sequenced Merged Mining” that allows L2s like BOB to inherit Bitcoin security, while being connected to other L1s like Etheruem. This dual capability is an industry first and aligns with BOB's vision of being the connecting layer between Bitcoin and Ethereum ecosystems. This technique not only addresses a critical gap in the blockchain space, but also effectively combats the challenge of sparse block space and rising transaction fees. OptiMine is a first step towards BOB’s ultimate goal to achieve Bitcoin security for Bitcoin assets (BTC, Ordinals, BRC20) and Ethereum security for Ethereum assets (ETH, stablecoins, ERC20s) on L2s, thus uniting the strengths of both ecosystems.

OptiMine's approach to crypto economic security involves:

Bitcoin PoW Security: Sequencers are nodes that collect and organize transactions for efficient processing on Bitcoin-based blockchain networks. OptiMine harnesses the full nodes run by miners, ensuring that rollup block producers, like Sequencers, are correctly creating blocks.
Fast Block Times: Achieving rapid block times is crucial for modern blockchain applications. OptiMine allows rollups to maintain c. 2 second block times, while the secure PoW finalization happens at slower intervals, c.1 minute.
Recovery Mechanisms: OptiMine introduces fallback protocols to maintain functionality and trust, even in the face of potential Sequencer or miner failures.
Decentralized Sequencers. OptiMine can also be used as a mechanism to sample Bitcoin miners into the set of active Sequencers, once a rollup has achieved Sequencer decentralization.

In the current crypto landscape, OptiMine not only represents a significant technological advancement but also offers miners additional incentives and rewards, especially valuable amid Bitcoin halvings that reduce direct mining rewards. This innovative approach positions OptiMine as a vital solution, providing alternative revenue streams for miners and enhancing its overall appeal and utility.