Cardano will have access to BTC’s $1.3 trillion liquidity with its BitcoinOS integration.
Cardano, a leading blockchain, has integrated BitcoinOS, a Bitcoin (BTC) smart contract, to allow the entry of $1.3 trillion worth of liquidity showcased by BTC market capitalization. The integration will help bring BTC to Cardano through trustless measures, avoiding centralization. With that, a wrapped version of the asset can be utilized by the Cardano community in DeFi and Web3 use cases, which will enhance the adoption of said use cases in the ecosystem.
The integration was spearheaded by EMURGO, a founding entity behind the Cardano blockchain that focuses on driving the adoption of its use cases. A bridge called the BOS Gail Bridge will facilitate the movement of BTC liquidity into and out of Cardano.
BOS previously partnered with Merlin Chain to set up and deploy the bridge, eliminating trust mechanisms. BTC liquidity movement across chains will occur by harnessing zero knowledge (zk) technology, specifically, BOS’ zkSNARK verification protocol, keeping it decentralized. The zk technology leverages the Bitcoin blockchain natively, removing the need for centralized setups, including multisig and multi-party computation methods that bridge BTC to other chains in a decentralized manner.
These developments will make Cardano the first layer-1 blockchain to capitalize on BTC liquidity in a scalable manner via BOS and its programmability, an EMURGO press release read. EMURGO’s founder and CEO, Ken Kodama, said, “This collaboration with BitcoinOS has the potential to unlock new cross-chain capabilities and further strengthen Cardano by granting Cardano users, projects, and developers secure, trustless access to the Bitcoin ecosystem.”
Edan Yago, co-founder and CEO of BOS, mentioned, “We are thrilled to reach this milestone with near-trustless BTC in one of the most distributed blockchains in the industry,” adding, “BOS has consistently accelerated Bitcoin scaling through a full-fledged solution for dApps and L2s using the guarantees of zero-knowledge cryptography.”
Cardano Upgraded to Adopt Decentralized Governance Last Month
Cardano underwent a hard fork last month to introduce a new upgrade called Chang, which, like the BOS integration, aims to underpin decentralization. The hard fork will bring decentralization to the layer-1 blockchain’s governance processes. Chang’s debut brings committees to Cardano’s governance, namely the Constitutional Committee, Delegate Representatives (dReps), and Stake Pool Operators (SPOs).
Adopting the committee approach sets Cardano away from the issues faced by token-based governance models, like those used by Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs). Essentially, governance in DAOs suffers from a few stakeholders taking over due to their accumulation of tokens. Cardano’s model aims to ensure all stakeholders have equal weight in the decision-making process.
