💥🔫 @Starknet & Alpen will build a shared Glock verifier on Bitcoin! @EliBenSasson shares his excitement for an open, neutral financial system for Bitcoin.

🧵 Alpha leak on Bitcoin + ZK: This is the first step in Glock (💥🔫) becoming a shared ZK verifier for Bitcoin. No token, no rent-seeking, just an open-source public good. -- Verifying ZK proofs on Bitcoin unlocks trust-minimized (and eventually trustless) bridges, the holy grail of Bitcoin scaling and interoperability. That’s been the focus of BitVM teams over the past 1–2 years. But once you solve the technical challenge, you hit a social one: fragmentation. If 25 teams launch their own “BitVM27” bridges, each trying to win the standard, you recreate Ethereum’s mess: AggLayer vs Superchain vs Aligned vs Elastic Chains. You need an interop solution for the interop solutions! The problem is everyone wants to control the stack and monetize it. But nobody wants to be locked into someone else’s stack and pay rent. The only viable path is a neutral, shared verifier one no one controls and everyone can trust. But that requires collaboration from the best implementation(s) and a willingness to forgo short-term incentives. That’s what Glock (💥🔫) aims to be. We at @AlpenLabs will be the primary maintainer and steward of it, but Glock will remain ecosystem-agnostic. No token. No tax. Just a verifier anyone can plug into. By removing rent-seeking, Glock makes it far easier for teams with conflicting interests to coordinate on shared infra. That’s the best-case scenario for Bitcoin: fewer silos, more composability. Example: Starknet can go Bitcoin L1 → Glock → Starknet, without touching Alpen. Same for us: Bitcoin L1 → Glock → Alpen. Same for any other team. The upside? Every team retains full sovereignty, execution, sequencing, DA, while gaining optionality (but not necessarily the obligation) to interoperate. And that’s what this relationship between @StarkWareLtd and @AlpenLabs signals: two of the strongest research teams putting egos aside to build public goods for Bitcoin. This is how we avoid Ethereum’s trap: shared ZK infra on Bitcoin that unlocks deep composability without compromising sovereignty. Glock is the coordination layer. A public good for serious Bitcoin infrastructure. 💥🔫

💥🔫 @Starknet & Alpen will build a shared Glock verifier on Bitcoin! @EliBenSasson shares his excitement for an open, neutral financial system for Bitcoin.

💥🔫 @Starknet & Alpen will build a shared Glock verifier on Bitcoin! @EliBenSasson shares his excitement for an open, neutral financial system for Bitcoin.

let's fucking go!!! so excited about this and glad to be working with frens at @AlpenLabs .

💥🔫 @Starknet & Alpen will build a shared Glock verifier on Bitcoin! @EliBenSasson shares his excitement for an open, neutral financial system for Bitcoin.

Behind the @Starknet x @AlpenLabs partnership are individuals who have long been advocating for the use of zero-knowledge proofs to improve bitcoin as peer-to-peer money - some for over a decade. In the days leading up to the announcement, the Insider Edition sat down with @lightcoin to discuss the progress bitcoin rollups have made since the release of his @HRF-sponsored report, Validity Rollups on Bitcoin, three years ago. There is nuance when we talk about “ZK on bitcoin”. Many people compare it to other ecosystems. This comparison is unfortunate for two reasons: First, it undermines the efforts of researchers and developers who are trying to achieve what was once thought to be impossible. Bitcoin's recent progress on the ZK front is nothing short of magical. Second, it doesn’t fully articulate the tradeoffs that these systems make to achieve their goal of verifying zero-knowledge proofs. This discussion provides insights into how we should view these novel ZK systems. It also covers the history of rollups on bitcoin and how we should view the road ahead. Link to the full interview threaded.

1/ Wrapped BTC paved the way, but it’s time for the next evolution. Together with @AlpenLabs, we’re building the most trust-minimized bridge possible between Bitcoin and DeFi. No honest majorities. No wrappers. Just pure, verifiable BTC on Starknet 🧵

💥🔫 @Starknet & Alpen will build a shared Glock verifier on Bitcoin! @EliBenSasson shares his excitement for an open, neutral financial system for Bitcoin.