This is native USDC on Bitcoin. Full support from Circle with their Mint & CCTP.

This paper builds off work from @liameagen and ourselves at @AlpenLabs. • GC's [1] enabled BitVM3. • Argo [2] and Duty Free Bits [3] were optimizations. This paper beings all of them together. [1] eprint.iacr.org/2025/1485 [2] eprint.iacr.org/2026/049 [3] eprint.iacr.org/2026/476

Something we never formally announced, but have worked on for years: Strata. It's the best solution to scaling Bitcoin (imo). -- Everyone has an opinion on scaling: soft forks, payments, big blocks, EVM, Simplicity, DeFi, privacy, do nothing, etc. The movement has outgrown a single answer. Fortunately, Strata can satisfy almost everyone at once. At its core, Strata is a shared bridge. A public good anyone can tap into. No change to Bitcoin required (though one wouldn't hurt). No EVM requirement. No new token. How it works, simply: Any scaling solution (we call them domains) can open a "ZK account" on Strata holding a BTC balance. Periodically it submits a ZK proof: "My scaling solution changed a bunch of user balances, here's unforgeable math showing I'm not lying." Strata verifies, updates the balance. Users on any domain can bridge in and out as they please. That's the whole requirement. Produce a valid ZK proof. Fortunately, ZK proofs are absurdly flexible, you can prove any computation. A privacy protocol, big blocks, micropayments, Simplicity, Ark. Literally whatever you want. We use it ourselves at @AlpenLabs: users do EVM stuff on our rollup Alpen → we generate a ZKP → updates our balance on Strata → settles to Bitcoin via Glock ("BitVM3 / Garbled Circuits"). Anyone else can do the same without ever touching Alpen. Full agency per domain: design your own VM, your own throughput trade-offs, your own sequencing. The best part is design choices from one team don't leak into anyone else's. So, if you hate the EVM, that's fine, don't use it. Build or use whatever you prefer, use the bridge as a public good. If different domains want to inter-op or share resources they can. But they don't have to! It's a really elegant design. -- For the technical crowd: Strata is a rollup on Bitcoin, so there is a Sequencer and DA element. The DA is very minimal because the big DA costs are decided by the individual domains. One domain can settle DA to Bitcoin, another could use a federation. The only DA Strata requires is posting the balances for each ZK Account (quite small), not the full state for each domain. Honest gotchas, for now: Strata's sequencer is a single entity today (decentralizing it is on the roadmap, nothing in the design prevents it). The bridge carries Glock's 1-of-N trust assumption: one honest participant prevents theft Not perfect. But strictly less trust than every wrapped BTC in existence. -- We have a high level visual here: alpen.org/#architecture Or you can check out the video explainer in the quote tweet.