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--- | ||
template: news-item | ||
title: 4 Years of tBTC | ||
description: >- | ||
Today’s tBTC is a robust, semi-permissioned Bitcoin bridge, iterating toward | ||
full trust-minimization. tBTC has been in production for 4 years without | ||
major incident with over [11,000 BTC bridged at its | ||
peak](https://dune.com/threshold/tbtc?ref=blog.threshold.network), serving | ||
users on Solana, Arbitrum, Optimism, Polygon, and Ethereum—making it one of | ||
the most trustworthy bridges in the space. | ||
date: 2024-08-26T12:35:21.390Z | ||
--- | ||
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4 years since the September 2020 launch of tBTC v1, tBTC continues to be one of | ||
the few bridges that has never suffered a loss of funds. For those 4 years, and | ||
the 2 years of development that preceded them, the teams at | ||
[Thesis](https://thesis.co) and [the Threshold | ||
Network](https://threshold.network) that have worked on the tBTC infrastructure | ||
have been focused on the three principles outlined in [tBTC is for | ||
L2s](/news/2024-04-15-tbtc-is-for-l2s): | ||
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- Security first | ||
- Credible neutrality | ||
- Economic alignment | ||
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## 4 years of learnings | ||
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In the early hours of May 18, 2020, at the height of COVID restrictions, the | ||
Keep team [paused the first release of the tBTC | ||
contracts](https://x.com/mhluongo/status/1262261372714455042) in what was to be | ||
one of the first and only cases in the crypto space of a team spotting a | ||
critical smart contract bug and avoiding all loss of funds. Following a | ||
[detailed | ||
retro](https://medium.com/keepnetwork/details-of-the-tbtc-deposit-pause-on-may-18-2020-38d7dd555663) | ||
and four months of heavy additional testing, [tBTC went | ||
live](https://tbtc.network/news/2020-09-22-tbtc-is-live/) in its first version. | ||
Though this was the only time that the bridge has risked fund loss, the | ||
learnings from that event have translated into a rigorous, careful development | ||
process that has ensured the security of the bridge for the years that | ||
followed. | ||
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Once tBTC v1 launched, it became clear that one of the key challenges in | ||
scaling a bridge is its capital efficiency---how to balance security of user | ||
funds against the economic guarantees that those funds will remain available. | ||
This observation triggered the development of v2 of the bridge, whose design | ||
carefully balanced these two components to produce a [decentralized Bitcoin | ||
bridge built for | ||
scaling](https://medium.com/keepnetwork/tbtc-v2-a-censorship-resistant-btc-bridge-at-100x-scale-199d3a54ab99). | ||
Launched in January 2023, this updated model has safely bridged over 11,000 BTC | ||
to date. | ||
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## 4 years of changes | ||
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||
Though the original version of tBTC was built by the Keep Network, 2021 brought | ||
an opportunity for Keep Network and NuCypher, a similar project with a slightly | ||
different product portfolio, to [merge into one joint | ||
DAO](https://blog.threshold.network/decentralized-merger/). In early 2022, the | ||
first decentralized merger was completed to create the Threshold Network, | ||
whose nodes now operate the systems that back tBTC bridging. In the intervening | ||
time, Threshold has become a full-fledged DAO with an associated legal entity, | ||
various guilds responsible for driving it and its products forward, bug bounty | ||
programs associated with tBTC and other protocols backed by the network, and | ||
more. | ||
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More recently, Threshold launched [thUSD](https://www.thresholdusd.org/en/), a | ||
stablecoin backed by Bitcoin based on tBTC, and L2s have started relying on | ||
tBTC to provide more use cases and possibilities to the world of Bitcoin. | ||
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## 4 years is just the beginning | ||
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tBTC is mature, but it's also just getting started, both as a building block | ||
and as an infrastructure tool. tBTC promises to be instrumental in building out | ||
the networks that are adding productive uses to Mezo. It is also underpinning a | ||
new wave of native experiences for Bitcoin-native users, including [transparent | ||
access to Bitcoin | ||
wallets](https://info.mezo.org/mezo-portal/btc/btc-deposit-guide) that want to | ||
interact with other chains. | ||
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The future of tBTC is bright. |
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