Rollkit Enables Rollup Development on Bitcoin Infrastructure
Rollkit, a toolkit for building Rollups, has just announced a new module that enables projects to develop EVM-compatible scaling solutions directly on Bitcoin's blockchain infrastructure. Rollkit Supports Rollup Development on Bitcoin Infrastructure According to a recent Twitter post, Rollkit has introduced a module that allows Rollups to leverage Bitcoin's infrastructure as a data provider. You can now run a sovereign rollup on Bitcoin. Announcing the first research integration of Bitcoin a
Rollkit, a toolkit for building Rollups, has just announced a new module that enables projects to develop EVM-compatible scaling solutions directly on Bitcoin's blockchain infrastructure.
Rollkit Supports Rollup Development on Bitcoin Infrastructure
According to a recent Twitter post, Rollkit has introduced a module that allows Rollups to leverage Bitcoin's infrastructure as a data provider.
You can now run a sovereign rollup on Bitcoin.
— Rollkit 🧮 (@RollkitDev) March 5, 2023
Announcing the first research integration of Bitcoin as a data availability layer for sovereign rollups. 🧵https://t.co/HpebxIz3fE
Note: Rollkit is an application interface developed by Celestia that allows projects to rapidly deploy Rollups while leveraging the data infrastructure provided by Celestia.
Rollkit's approach delegates Consensus and Data Availability responsibilities to Bitcoin's base layer, while concentrating on Execution and building the Rollup construction toolkit for other projects.
Read more: Data Availability – The Bottleneck for Rollups on Ethereum
Notably, Rollkit has announced that it successfully tested running EVM (Ethereum Virtual Machine) directly on top of Bitcoin's consensus and data layer.
A byte of CALLDATA in ETH L1 is 16 gas. 360kb = 5,760,000 gas. Current gas cost is 15 gwei. 5,760,000 * 15 = 86,400,000 gwei = 0.0864 ETH = 140 bucks.
— Eric Wall | BIP-420😺 (@ercwl) January 29, 2023
$20 vs $140, 7x difference. https://t.co/1skiffb7Cq
The announcement has reignited familiar debates across crypto Twitter — echoing the controversy that erupted after the Ordinals NFT collection launched. Whether Bitcoin should serve as a DApp ecosystem and host NFT collections remains a deeply contested question.
A "sovereign rollup on Bitcoin" is actually an alt L1 that stores its block data on Bitcoin. It's not a real rollup or a real L2.
— Ryan Berckmans ryanb.eth (@ryanberckmans) March 5, 2023
imo, the best way for us to fight back against these lies is to build an Ethereum zk L2 that puts its data on Bitcoin. https://t.co/QqLlik3dCY
Read more: Bitcoin NFTs and the Controversy Over Bitcoin's Network Role
On the question of gas fees for posting data to Bitcoin, Eric Wall ran the numbers and found that using Bitcoin as a data layer is seven times cheaper than Ethereum — a claim that itself touched off a wave of pushback and counter-arguments.
Ryan Berckmans pushed back harder, arguing that the entire "Rollup on Bitcoin" framing is misleading — it amounts to nothing more than posting block data to Bitcoin, not a genuinely novel scaling solution.
"A sovereign rollup on Bitcoin is really just an alt-L1 that stores its block data on Bitcoin. It is not a real Layer-2. The best way to call out that framing is to actually build a ZK-based Ethereum L2 that posts its data to Bitcoin."
The debate over what Bitcoin should — and shouldn't — be used for shows no sign of cooling down, especially as NFT activity and new supporting technologies continue to pull focus toward this seemingly "old-school" yet fundamentally battle-tested blockchain.