During the second week of February, a new project called tBTC was unveiled that is similar to the Wrapped Bitcoin (WBTC) created with the Ethereum network. However, the tBTC effort claims to be a noncustodial application that allows users to deposit BTC, mint tBTC, and lend it with interest.
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tBTC Project Launches on Ropsten Testnet
On January 30, 2019, the Wrapped Bitcoin (WBTC) project launched on the Ethereum network using the ERC20 standard. WBTC allows people to wrap collateralized BTC in Ethereum but the method has a custodian. The WBTC custodian is Bitgo and the project is also backed by Kyber Network and Ren (formerly Republic Protocol). Last August, software developer Matt Luongo told people about his work on Twitter and published the tBTC specifications. Luongo tweeted that the “cat’s out of the bag” and he and his team were working on tBTC for 10 months prior. Then on February 13, Luongo announced the first release of tBTC on the Ropsten testnet. The software engineer stressed that this was the first of a “few planned releases leading up to mainnet” and the team is still auditing. Luongo added:
tBTC opens the entire Ethereum ecosystem to Bitcoiners. What happens when Bitcoiners can choose between Coinjoin and Tornado.cash for fungibility?
#tBTC is live on testnet! https://t.co/k8q5WLmOFu pic.twitter.com/FxA5moyi3c
— Keep #tBTC (@keep_project) February 14, 2020
Luongo’s announcement was welcomed by a handful of bitcoiners and the Ethereum community as well, although the recent exploitation of Bzx has had a lot of skeptics questioning decentralized finance
