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bitcoin++ Istanbul 2025, scaling edition
Browse the schedule by room to spot conflicts and follow what comes next in each track.
← Back to event pageBitVM3: Garbled Circuits
- Time
- Wed, Sep 3 · 1:00 PM – 1:45 PM
- Location
- Main Stage
- Type
- talk
- Duration
- 45m
Strong privacy and efficient scalability by combining client-side validation with zero-knowledge proofs
Speakers
Building Advanced Bitcoin Protocols with BitVMX
- Time
- Wed, Sep 3 · 1:45 PM – 2:30 PM
- Location
- Main Stage
- Type
- talk
- Duration
- 45m
This talk examines the building blocks that BitVMX provides for constructing complex disputable computing systems on Bitcoin. We will analyze the architectural design of these components, and discuss advanced solutions that emerge from their composition. The presentation will also reflect on lessons learned during the development of applications that use these techniques.
Speakers
BRC2.0 and Programmable Bitcoin Native Assets
- Time
- Wed, Sep 3 · 2:45 PM – 3:15 PM
- Location
- Main Stage
- Type
- talk
- Duration
- 30m
We will briefly explore what Bitcoin meta-protocols are and how they work then go deeper into how BRC2.0 works and explore programmable bitcoin native assets.
Combining Bitcoin and Ethereum to build the gateway to Bitcoin DeFi
- Time
- Wed, Sep 3 · 3:15 PM – 3:45 PM
- Location
- Main Stage
- Type
- talk
- Duration
- 30m
Imagine unlocking Bitcoin's full potential in DeFi by combining the best of both worlds. Bitcoin's security and capital, with Ethereum's innovation and apps. Use native BTC on BOB Hybrid Chain, powered by BitVM and secured by Bitcoin, and feel confident BOB is the safest place to put your BTC to work in DeFi.
Speakers
Trustless Bitcoin Vaults via BitVM3
- Time
- Wed, Sep 3 · 3:45 PM – 4:30 PM
- Location
- Main Stage
- Type
- talk
- Duration
- 45m
Bitcoin is the largest crypto asset, yet less than 1% is used in decentralized finance (DeFi), largely due to the absence of trustless bridges. Existing bridges are either centralized or require strong trust assumptions, as Bitcoin’s scripting language lacks covenants. We overcome this by introducing trustless Bitcoin vaults: self-custodial on-chain contracts that lock BTC to specific external protocols. Withdrawals are permitted only upon verification of zero-knowledge proofs of external smart contract states, removing the need for trust. This design enables native Bitcoin—without wrapping or bridging—to serve as collateral for lending, stablecoins, and perpetual DEXs. Using BitVM3, we show these vaults operate with minimal on-chain overhead, supporting scalability.
The Challenges of Scaling Bitcoin
- Time
- Wed, Sep 3 · 5:15 PM – 6:00 PM
- Location
- Main Stage
- Type
- panel
- Duration
- 45m
Walton is joined by leading technical minds to discuss the challenges of scaling bitcoin, new protocols like Ark, and the hurdles developers face to enable practical self-custody for the masses.
Speakers
ZK: Zero Knowledge Bitcoin
- Time
- Wed, Sep 3 · 6:15 PM – 7:00 PM
- Location
- Main Stage
- Type
- panel
- Duration
- 45m
To be determined
Bitcoin for International Trade
- Time
- Wed, Sep 3 · 1:00 PM – 1:45 PM
- Location
- Talks Stage
- Type
- talk
- Duration
- 45m
Adoption in the global production and supply chains is the next big frontier for Bitcoin. The fiat currency system has a US$2.5 trillion trade finance gap which prevents business growth and prosperity in entire countries. Bitcoin arguably could come to the rescue. For this, we must openly confront and build solutions for a number of neglected issues: volatility, layered scaling of both technical and monetary capacity, and the role of credit in Bitcoin. I will report the findings of a fresh market research project in Turkey which showed great interest amongst Turkish businesses. Interestingly, of all countries worldwide, Turkey may be the best place to start business adoption of Bitcoin. What are the chances and challenges to orange-pill businesses in the real economy?
Speakers
The Script Army Knife
- Time
- Wed, Sep 3 · 1:45 PM – 2:30 PM
- Location
- Talks Stage
- Type
- talk
- Duration
- 45m
What does it take to make Bitcoin programmable money? Do we need to abandon Script, or can we make Script great instead? Developers don't want opcodes, they want capabilities. And different sets of opcodes enable different capabilities. But not all ways of enabling these capabilities are equally good. What does it mean to enable something badly? Can we avoid that? An opinionated journey into Bitcoin Script, the new primitives and the opcodes that enable them.
Speakers
ZK and STARKs on Bitcoin
- Time
- Wed, Sep 3 · 2:45 PM – 3:15 PM
- Location
- Talks Stage
- Type
- talk
- Duration
- 30m
Zero-Knowledge proofs are no longer theory: they’re tools that can push Bitcoin further without compromising its core principles. In this talk, we’ll break down the essentials of ZK and dive deep into STARKs: transparent, trust-minimized, and resilient even in a post-quantum future. We’ll explore how they could strengthen Bitcoin, from more efficient, privacy-preserving SPV proofs to potential consensus improvements, and examine zk-rollups through a Bitcoin lens, as a way to scale while keeping decentralization intact. Finally, we’ll outline how STARKs might integrate into Bitcoin’s Layer 2 landscape, from enhancing Lightning to complementing emerging designs like Ark, expanding what’s possible without weakening Bitcoin’s foundation.
Speakers
Building Better Privacy Applications and Benefitting Miner Economy
- Time
- Wed, Sep 3 · 1:00 PM – 2:30 PM
- Location
- Workshops Stage
- Type
- workshop
- Duration
- 1h 30m
In this workshop, Citrea team will showcase powerful applications that can be built on Bitcoin using zero-knowledge technology. Our focus will be on privacy and miner applications. We will code and present two interesting applications: 1. Building better privacy experience on Citrea than CoinJoin 2. Miner bribing app that benefits the miner economy
Speakers
Union Bridge
- Time
- Wed, Sep 3 · 2:45 PM – 3:45 PM
- Location
- Workshops Stage
- Type
- talk
- Duration
- 1h
Discover Union Bridge, a future-forward solution enabling trust-minimised Bitcoin movement to and from Rootstock This talk will cover its innovative architecture, featuring optimistic verification for peg-outs on Bitcoin using BitVMX. Union Bridge significantly enhances decentralisation and committee dynamism, moving from an honest majority to a 1-of-N trust assumption.
Speakers
Unveiling the Magic of Zero-Knowledge Proofs: From Waldo to Bitcoin's Future
- Time
- Wed, Sep 3 · 3:45 PM – 4:30 PM
- Location
- Workshops Stage
- Type
- talk
- Duration
- 45m
This talk offers a brief introduction to the fascinating world of Zero-Knowledge Proofs (ZKPs), exploring their fundamental concepts and real-world implications. We'll use an interactive demo to grasp the core idea: proving something is true without revealing anything about the underlying secret, as we delve into how these cryptographic marvels leverage randomness to achieve verifiable certainty – a compelling contrast to traditional deterministic proofs. Participant will discover how the surprising the link between ZKPs and NP-Complete problems offers a broad range of applications.
Speakers
Hackathon Kickoff
- Time
- Thu, Sep 4 · 12:30 PM – 12:45 PM
- Location
- Main Stage
- Type
- hackathon
- Duration
- 15m
Who’s the fastest scaling hacker in Istanbul? We’ll take the top 5 teams from the Expo and give them the opportunity to impress the judges live.
Speakers
Hackathon Team Building
- Time
- Thu, Sep 4 · 12:45 PM – 1:00 PM
- Location
- Main Stage
- Type
- hackathon
- Duration
- 15m
Optional!! Come find a team to work with. We’ll help everyone find someone else to work with, and then you can start making plans for what you’ll build over lunch.
Speakers
Hackathon Ideas Workshop
- Time
- Thu, Sep 4 · 1:15 PM – 1:30 PM
- Location
- Main Stage
- Type
- hackathon
- Duration
- 15m
Optional!! Need a good idea to hack on? Come ideate with the btc++ staff and hackathon veterans.
Speakers
Hacking Time
- Time
- Thu, Sep 4 · 1:30 PM – 4:30 PM
- Location
- Main Stage
- Type
- hackathon
- Duration
- 3h
You don’t have much time, what are you building?
Speakers
Hackathon Expo
- Time
- Thu, Sep 4 · 5:45 PM – 8:15 PM
- Location
- Workshops Stage
- Type
- hackathon
- Duration
- 2h 30m
Showcase your work in this round-robin style of judging
Speakers
Bitcoin x STARKs: a math match made in Heaven
- Time
- Fri, Sep 5 · 12:30 PM – 1:15 PM
- Location
- Main Stage
- Type
- talk
- Duration
- 45m
Explore how Zero Knowledge Proofs and STARKs in particular can be useful for Bitcoin.
Speakers
Bitcoin’s Quantum Question
- Time
- Fri, Sep 5 · 1:15 PM – 2:00 PM
- Location
- Main Stage
- Type
- keynote
- Duration
- 45m
description to come…
Speakers
FLEX: Capital-Efficient Fraud-Proofs for Bitcoin Bridges
- Time
- Fri, Sep 5 · 2:15 PM – 2:45 PM
- Location
- Main Stage
- Type
- talk
- Duration
- 30m
As Bitcoin interoperability advances, a persistent challenge remains: building secure, scalable bridges without locking up vast amounts of idle capital. FLEX (Fraud proofs with Lightweight Escrows for eXits) introduces a breakthrough approach to this problem. Built using garbled circuits and compatible with the BitVM and ecosystems, FLEX enables on-demand security bonds that are only activated when a dispute arises. This reduces costs without compromising security.
Speakers
Bitcoin bridges with garbled circuits
- Time
- Fri, Sep 5 · 2:45 PM – 3:15 PM
- Location
- Main Stage
- Type
- talk
- Duration
- 30m
Garbled circuits are surprisingly straightforward, yet powerful cryptographic constructs that enable secure computation between parties. Notably, they allow us to prove arbitrary computations on Bitcoin optimistically, significantly cheaper than earlier methods like BitVM.
Scaling User Experiences
- Time
- Fri, Sep 5 · 3:15 PM – 3:45 PM
- Location
- Main Stage
- Type
- panel
- Duration
- 30m
One common complaint for Lightning, the OG layer-2 scaling solution for Bitcoin, is how complicated and difficult the onboarding experience is for new users. How do new protocols and ways of scaling improve the user experience, while maintaining guarantees for self-custody?
Speakers
Verifying Proofs on Bitcoin Today with Garbled Circuits
- Time
- Fri, Sep 5 · 3:45 PM – 4:30 PM
- Location
- Main Stage
- Type
- talk
- Duration
- 45m
We can enable verification of off chain computation on bitcoin using cryptography without soft forks. This talk will describe how, what the trade offs are, and what the future might hold.
Speakers
Hackathon Finals
- Time
- Fri, Sep 5 · 5:00 PM – 5:45 PM
- Location
- Main Stage
- Type
- hackathon
- Duration
- 45m
Who’s the fastest scaling hacker in Istanbul? We’ll take the top 5 teams from the Expo and give them the opportunity to impress the judges live.
Speakers
BitVM: Bridging Bitcoin
- Time
- Fri, Sep 5 · 5:45 PM – 6:30 PM
- Location
- Main Stage
- Type
- panel
- Duration
- 45m
Panel discussion about Bridging Bitcoin
Speakers
WISCH, An efficient data signing scheme via correlated signatures
- Time
- Fri, Sep 5 · 1:15 PM – 2:15 PM
- Location
- Talks Stage
- Type
- talk
- Duration
- 1h
As disputable computing protocols for Bitcoin evolve, data signing fees remain a significant portion of total operational costs. We’ll explore how WISCH, a new data signing scheme for Bitcoin, can help cut costs and optimize the efficiency of BitVMX, BitVM2, and Garbled Circuits solutions.
Speakers
Derivation of strong Bitcoin keys from lower-than-standard entropy secrets
- Time
- Fri, Sep 5 · 2:15 PM – 2:45 PM
- Location
- Talks Stage
- Type
- talk
- Duration
- 30m
Seed phrases were introduced in Bitcoin wallets in 2013 as a human-readable representation of cryptographic secrets, intended to be memorized rather than stored. However, most users struggle to reliably memorize even a short list of random words, creating usability and security trade-offs. This talk explores alternative approaches to Bitcoin key recovery based on entropy extraction from human-memorable data sources. The talk includes: - extracting the secret data from biometrics and real-world objects - combining it with the password and PoW to receive a reliable Bitcoin key with enough security bits - constructing the Bitcoin address in the way it can be recovered if the primary key is lost Finally, the talk will present an economic analysis of the system parameters including PoW difficulty, secret length, locktime, and attack costs needed to achieve the optimal solution from both security and time perspectives.
Speakers
From Theory to Practice: Making Cryptography Play Nicely with Bitcoin
- Time
- Fri, Sep 5 · 2:45 PM – 3:15 PM
- Location
- Talks Stage
- Type
- talk
- Duration
- 30m
Interesting new scaling solutions like BitVM and garbled circuits use existing and novel cryptographic constructions for bitcoin scaling. But while bitcoin offers expressivity through script, it is limited; this means we need to get clever to help new solutions play nicely with existing protocol rules. In this talk, we'll give examples of techniques we can use to carefully and thoughtfully integrate scaling solutions given bitcoin's unique limitations.
Speakers
Simple SNARKs for Local Proving
- Time
- Fri, Sep 5 · 3:15 PM – 3:45 PM
- Location
- Talks Stage
- Type
- talk
- Duration
- 30m
Modern ZK SNARK design has become increasingly modular, flexible, and complex, in order to squeeze out server-side performance for scaling applications. This complexity poses security risks, and yet is still insufficient for generating proofs locally on consumer hardware. Jim from Irreducible, the team leading R&D of Binius, presents new work on simpler SNARKS optimized for local proving, and the benefits of binary field-based constructions.
Bitcoin PIPEs
- Time
- Fri, Sep 5 · 3:45 PM – 4:30 PM
- Location
- Talks Stage
- Type
- talk
- Duration
- 45m
Bitcoin PIPEs present a way to emulate missing functionality/opcodes for Bitcoin without additional trust assumptions or protocol extensions.
Speakers
Enabling stateless offline Bitcoin clients with STARKs
- Time
- Fri, Sep 5 · 1:15 PM – 2:00 PM
- Location
- Workshops Stage
- Type
- workshop
- Duration
- 45m
We will explore how to "compress" SPV proofs to make them self-sufficient, so that clients do not need to store Bitcoin block headers or maintain a connection to an RPC node in order to verify transaction inclusion.
Speakers
MergeSync: towards link bound Initial Block Download
- Time
- Fri, Sep 5 · 2:45 PM – 3:15 PM
- Location
- Workshops Stage
- Type
- workshop
- Duration
- 30m
New technique for building the utxo set. Speed-up over 2x+ confirmed experimentally. Tech walktrough + Demo
Speakers
Bills of Exchange, e-cash, and the Velocity of Money
- Time
- Fri, Sep 5 · 3:15 PM – 3:45 PM
- Location
- Workshops Stage
- Type
- workshop
- Duration
- 30m
In this workshop, we will go through the entire process from drawing a Bitcoin denominated bill of exchange between two companies, to using the ecash generated from this bill of exchange to pay for the daily needs of the employees of these companies. This session will show the full money cycle for the new Bitcoin economy, which will allow Bitcoin to scale up to use as a medium of exchange.
Speakers
Faster and Cheaper Atomic Swaps
- Time
- Fri, Sep 5 · 3:45 PM – 4:30 PM
- Location
- Workshops Stage
- Type
- workshop
- Duration
- 45m
I will present Papa Swaps which are an invention i made to reduce the cost and duration of submarine swaps by 50%
Speakers