Rootstock is an OG of the Bitcoin L2 space. They were the earliest in the market to focus on merge mining, EVM compatibility, and Bitcoin DeFi. In this interview, Daniel talks about the growth and what is happening within the Rootstock ecosystem as we go into this 2024-2025 cycle.

Curious where Bitcoin L2s are going?

You'll want to listen to this one.

Follow Daniel on Twitter: @danielfogg

Learn more about Rootstock: https://rootstock.io/

Scaling Bitcoin is hard. Statechains are one potential way to scale it in a cheap and private way with minimal people to trust. Nicholas and his team at Mercury Layer are at the bleeding edge of developing Statechains.

Follow Nicholas on Twitter: @gregory_nico

Learn more about Mercury: https://mercurylayer.com/

The usual suspects of Charlie, Donny, Bob and I discuss latest Bitcoin topics:

- Merlin Chain. New Bitcoin L2.

- Latest Runes Alpha

- The Universal Bitcoin/Sats Symbol

- EVMs as Bitcoin sidechains

- Rootstock as the best EVM sidechain

Follow Charlie: https://twitter.com/cbspears

Follow Donny: https://twitter.com/itsdonnyok

Follow Bob: https://twitter.com/BobBodily

Follow Jake: https://twitter.com/JakeBlockchain

Moving from chain to chain is a pain in the ass. Layer on custodian risk and this area is ripe for better solutions. That was Boltz is working on with their non-custodial cross-chain/multi-layer swaps from different Bitcoin focued chains. Kilian is the co-founder of Boltz.

We discuss:

- How he got into Bitcoin?

- The benefits of building things non-custodial

- Using L2s to solve Lightning scaling problems

and much more!

Follow Kilian on Twitter: @kilrau

Check out Boltz at https://boltz.exchange/

Orkun is the co-founder of Citrea. A new Bitcoin L2 leveraging the latest ZK Rollup tech and BitVM to connect to the Bitcoin L1. Follow him on Twitter: @0x_orkun

How best to scale Bitcoin is a hotly debated topic. One promising option is rollups, but to do them properly we need an a new OP_CODE. That is until BitVM entered the picture with a middle path with potential for bridges with much safer trust assumptions.

In this open-format chat. Charlie Spears, Donny, Bob Bodily, and myself discuss a few interesting topics including:

- How close ZKrollups are to coming to Bitcoin

- Building better bridges for L2s with BitVM

- The Taproot Wizards BIPLand

- Finding consensus for upgrades in 2024

You will definitely learn something in this one.

In 2023, managing your crypto wallet is still a big pain in the butt. Seed phrases are a single point of failure no normal person wants to use. Enter the Ryder One. They have rethought the experience of what a hardware wallet could be from first principles and created a completely new experience for securely managing your digital assets.

Louise Ivan is the CEO and Co-Founder of Ryder.

Learn more about Ryder: https://www.ryder.id/

Order your own Ryder One: https://kickstarter.com/projects/ryder-wallet/ryder-one-secure-wallet-strong-device-simple-transactions?ref=djvflh

What is RGB? That is the question we are answering today. RGB is an off-chain solution that brings smart contracts to Bitcoin. It's a radically different approach to the global-state blockchains we're used to. Hunteris the Director of Engineering at DIBA. They are building a bleeding-edge wallet and platform to operationalize the RGB protocol. Tune in, there's a lot to cover.

Follow Hunter on Twitter: @cryptoquick

Learn more about DIBA: https://diba.io/

Try BitMask wallet: https://bitmask.app/

Learn more about RGB: https://rgb.info/

Mike Jarmuz is the Managing Partner at Lightning Ventures. A Bitcoin-focused venture capital firm supporting early-stage founders. He has invested in over 1,500 startups to-date.

We discuss:

- Biggest mistakes he sees founders make when pitching

- Anti-VC sentiment in Bitcoin

- Biggest Opportunities

- How to find good VC partners

+ much more

Follow Mike on Twitter: @@MikeJarmuz

Check out Lightning Ventures: https://ltng.ventures/

$500 billion in BTC is sitting mostly dormant. Proof-of-Stake chains need large amounts of capital to secure the network. David Tse is working to solve these two problems by allowing you to stake Bitcoin and secure a myriad of other blockchains.

This new project is called Babylon. Check out the recently released litepaper here.

https://docs.babylonchain.io/assets/files/btc_staking_litepaper-32bfea0c243773f0bfac63e148387aef.pdf

Follow David Tse on Twitter: @dntse

Follow Babylon on Twitter: @babylon_chain

Learn more about Babylon

https://babylonchain.io/