Threshold Lauched tBTC, a Trust-Minimized Bitcoin - Ethereum Bridge

Threshold Network, a provider of cryptography services, has announced the launch of tBTC, a decentralized, permissionless, and scalable Bitcoin-to-Ethereum bridge. The launch will allow users to wrap their Bitcoin in exchange for tBTC tokens, which can be used in the Ethereum ecosystem.

The protocol use a Optimistic minting model powered by Minters and Guardians. Minters are a small, permissioned group who monitor the chain for revealed BTC deposits, while Guardians are a larger, permissioned group who verify minting requests and cancel any fraudulent or nefarious mints. Later this year, Threshold plans to enable fully permissionless minting. The optimistic minting model is now in partnership with several major players in the DeFi space, including Curve DAO, Yearn.Finance, Synthetix, and more.

According to analysis by LlamaRisk, there is only 1% of the BTC supply is bridged to Ethereum and almost 98% of that is WBTC, which uses Bitgo as centralized custodian. Another previously popular option was renBTC which is now sunsetting as a result of the Alameda bankruptcy.