For a long time, the EVM ecosystem and the Bitcoin blockchain community have shared a complex relationship. While the Ethereum EVM ecosystem thrived, Bitcoin firmly held its first-mover advantage as a store of value and the primary market mover. The challenge of building EVM smart contracts on Bitcoin, often seen as a hurdle for the original blockchain network due to the potential for computational strain and performance degradation, presented a unique opportunity for developers to pioneer and innovate.
In their bid to address the question of scaling the Bitcoin network, the team behind BOB (Build on Bitcoin) decided to apply the Ethereum optimistic rollup approach in creating a Layer 2 for the Bitcoin network. Similarly, this approach seeks to move the computation off-chain and retain verification on-chain.
BOB is a first-of-its-kind hybrid Layer 2 solution that combines Bitcoin security with Ethereum's versatility. Fully aligned and devoted to scaling Bitcoin, BOB aims to inherit the security of Bitcoin Proof-of-Work, contributing to the network's decentralization and providing a place for innovation to happen on the OG blockchain.
To make that happen and to make building on Bitcoin more appealing, BOB was bootstrapped as an OP stack-based rollup on Ethereum, making it fully EVM compatible. Alongside support for EVM smart contracts, infrastructure, and tooling, BOB boasts support for Rust, integration of established bridged Bitcoin variants including wBTC and tBTC, as well as a built-in Bitcoin light client. BOB also recently launched Gateway, allowing anyone to get wBTC and tBTC on BOB with a single Bitcoin transaction.
Now, with support from Tenderly's full-stack infrastructure for the entire dapp lifecycle, developers and teams can leverage the only high-performance Node RPC with built-in, collaborative development environments and powerful debugging and exploration tools.
What’s the vision for BOB?
The vision for the BOB network is to provide a space for builders to create dapps and innovate on top of Bitcoin’s existing stack, where assets bridged to the rollup are secured by Bitcoin, while Ethereum assets are secured by Ethereum and will be realized in multiple phases:
- Optimistic BOB - In the current phase, BOB is an optimistic rollup on Ethereum based on the OP stack, with settlement taking place on Ethereum Mainnet, various cross-chain bridges, and a light client to track the state of Bitcoin and perform verification.
- Optimistic ETH Rollup with Bitcoin PoW Security - In the next phase, BOB seeks to introduce and rely on Bitcoin Proof-of-work security by aligning with Bitcoin miners through OptiMine, a new mining technique that will allow miners to validate the state of the BOB rollup.
- Bitcoin/Ethereum/ZK Optimistic Rollup—The last phase of the BOB roadmap aims to transition to Bitcoin as the settlement layer for BOB by using the recently showcased BitVM. BitVM seeks to introduce smart contracts to Bitcoin without any changes to the network’s consensus. In that final stage, BOB's vision would be accomplished by ensuring Bitcoin assets are secured by Bitcoin and Ethereum assets by Ethereum.
Why should you go BOB (Build on Bitcoin)?
BOB network’s appeal as the bridge between Bitcoin and Ethereum cannot be overstated as it tries to capture the key benefits of both networks. On the one hand, the new L2 seeks to bring back the spirit of innovation and utility to the Bitcoin network, which goes beyond the essentials of store of value and transactions.
Now, you can start building on Layer 2, which is directly connected to the Bitcoin network, bringing decentralized applications and innovation to the network that introduced blockchain technology. The BOB team developed an SDK, libraries, and smart contracts that make it easy to connect to the Bitcoin network to help you develop on BOB and deploy smart contracts that interact with Bitcoin.
At the same time, BOB relies on tried-and-tested technologies. The network was initially launched on the Ethereum network and built using the Optimism OP stack. It is fully part of the EVM ecosystem, with all the proprietary infrastructure, developer tooling, and compatibility with existing smart contracts, making deployment straightforward.
You can also make use of another benefit this blockchain unification provides. BOB sources liquidity from the two largest blockchain ecosystems and positions itself as the top Layer 2 solution for the mass adoption of DeFi. This makes BOB uniquely positioned to help spur the decentralized finance ecosystem on the Bitcoin network.
Lastly, there is also the official points program for users focused on on-chain activity that BOB has launched called BOB Fusion. If you’re looking to launch and bootstrap a dapp on the BOB network, you can now incentivize users and make using your dapp more appealing.
How to build and scale with BOB and Tenderly?
Tenderly empowers you to build and scale dapps with ease. With the full-stack infrastructure for the entire dapp lifecycle, you are all set to develop at each stage and move fast from initial development to on-chain deployment on BOB.
You have all of the Web3 tools you need to develop, deploy, and scale your dapps from a single dashboard, from the Node RPC, collaborative development environments, and industry-leading debugging and exploration tools.
1. Integrate fast and reliable node infrastructure
Did you know that throughout 2024, Tenderly is the best-performing Node RPC for Optimism? Tenderly supports all of the leading OP stack-based blockchains, and now BOB joins these ranks. With numerous benefits, check what you also get as you create node RPCs for BOB:
- High performance and scalability: Designed to handle high traffic volume and extreme usage spikes as your dapp user activity grows, Tenderly Node provides fast, reliable, globally available service with soft limits and SLAs.
- Embedded development environments and essential tools: By relying on Tenderly Node, you get access to the entire Tenderly suite of best-in-class Web3 features such as Virtual TestNets, Debugger, Simulations API, Gas Profiler, and more!
- Monitoring and alerting: Track, receive notifications, and automatically respond to relevant on-chain events using Tenderly Web3 Alerts and Actions that can execute custom code on event-based triggers.
Start by creating the number of nodes for BOB as your project needs, copy the provided code snippets to your project, and rely on the industry-leading Node RPC.
2. Build and test in zero-setup environments
Announced recently, Tenderly Virtual TestNets are the Web3 industry game-changing, collaborative development environments designed to replace traditional public testnets and unlock new possibilities in building on-chain dapps across teams.
Designed explicitly for Web3 teams, you can use them to fork the BOB network and spin up any number of instances for each of your teams, creating new and unique ways for cross-team development and testing by relying on:
- Real-time syncing with the BOB network's latest state to help you build on the latest on-chain data.
- Full control and customization of your BOB replica with state manipulation, unlimited faucet, and early-stage privacy.
- Cross-team collaborative development workflows, including CI, dapp staging, and public testing for all your dapp’s Solidity, backend, and frontend components.
- Built-in explorer and debugging tools with an in-depth overview of all on-chain data of your BOB replica and instant issue fixing.
3. Explore and analyze on-chain data
Tenderly’s full-stack infrastructure Dashboard provides powerful debugging and exploration tools for all BOB on-chain data relevant to your dapp. Keep track of successful, unsuccessful, and mempool transactions and important data in a human-readable format. Relied on by the top DeFi teams, Web3 developers, and security experts, the suite includes:
- Transaction Explorer, which offers detailed information about transaction execution, token transfers, full stack trace, contracts involved, emitted events, state changes, and more.
- Debugger provides you with the exact bug-causing location within the smart contract code, and allows you to inspect the failed transaction trace by trace. You can also make changes and attempt to fix the contract source directly from the Dashboard.
- Gas profiler that accurately breaks down gas consumption per each function call involved, helping you analyze and optimize gas usage.
(BOB) Build on Bitcoin now with Tenderly!
BOB is the latest entrant to the rollup OP stack-based ecosystem on Ethereum, with a unique vision of merging liquidity, security, and innovation with Bitcoin, closing the gap between the two biggest blockchain ecosystems.
By combining the best of two worlds, BOB provides an entirely new playing field for EVM developers to start building on Bitcoin via a new Layer, with all the already existing Web3 tools at your disposal.
You can now move fast from development to deployment by leveraging Tenderly’s full-stack infrastructure for the entire dapp cycle - the only node RPC with all the built-in development environments and tools available from a single dashboard.
Start building on Bitcoin and grow on BOB with Tenderly!
