zkMIPS BTC Layer 2 GOAT Network launched

zkMIPS, as the first zkVM based on the MIPS instruction set, combined with the mature ecosystem of MIPS and ZKM's ZKP infrastructure, greatly promotes the rapid implementation of zkVM.

Author: Stephen D

The Bitcoin Layer 2 network is a technical solution designed to improve the speed of Bitcoin transactions. By moving some transactions from the Bitcoin main chain to off-chain processing, it reduces the burden on the main chain, improves transaction processing speed, and reduces transaction costs. Common Layer 2 network technologies include the Lightning Network, State Channels, and the very hot BitVM2 bridge combined with zkRollup.

Difficulties faced by Bitcoin Layer 2 zkRollup solution

Security: Security is the most concerning factor for Bitcoin holders. Security needs to consider the consistency, liveness, and self-healing of the network. Consistency, namely consensus security, determines the immutability of the entire network's ledger, liveness determines the overall availability of the network, and self-healing determines the network's ability to quickly recover from attacks or anomalies. As a BTC zkRollup, to achieve the security inheritance of BTC, zkRollup needs to fully commit to second-layer transactions and the commitment can be directly verified by Bitcoin miners. However, the difficulty lies in the current difficulty of implementing Covenant in BTC scripts. Some promising solutions have recently emerged, including BitVM2, function encryption, and the latest ColliderScript solution. Secondly, the maintenance of liveness and self-healing of the second-layer network itself. Currently, many zkRollups face the problem of a centralized Sequencer, leading to a high degree of centralization in the Rollup chain itself, lacking sufficient incentives for other players to participate, forming a vicious cycle.

Programmability: Programmability is the infrastructure of BTCFi. As the largest asset in the blockchain ecosystem, Bitcoin has long been seen as a value storage tool, but it appears relatively lacking in practical applications and revenue generation. This limitation mainly stems from the scalability of the Bitcoin network and the inherent restrictions of the script language, making it difficult to support complex decentralized finance (DeFi) applications. For Bitcoin holders, traditionally, the only way to generate income from their BTC holdings is to deposit the assets into centralized exchanges or use bridging services to convert them into wrapped tokens (such as WBTC). However, these methods introduce additional risks, such as trust risks associated with centralized platforms, which contradict the essence of decentralized Bitcoin. It becomes crucial to introduce the EVM by drawing on the rich protocols and ecosystem of the ETH ecosystem in the DeFi field.

GOAT Network: Bitcoin Layer 2 Network compatible with EVM based on zkMIPS

GOAT Network is the first optimistic challenge protocol to implement security enhancements on Bitcoin Layer 2 based on zkMIPS, BitVM2, and decentralized Sequencer, achieving 100% EVM compatibility while requiring only 1-of-n assumptions to achieve the security of the Bitcoin network. GOAT Network has the following core highlights:

Achieving True Decentralization: Through the groundbreaking permissionless decentralized Sequencer protocol, all cross-chain messages—including asset peg-in, peg-out, and second-layer network state Rollup—can reach consensus on both Bitcoin and GOAT Network. This completely eliminates the reliance on a single centralized entity, ensuring true decentralization. At the same time, this innovation significantly simplifies the trust setup of the BitVM2 protocol, while providing an equivalent level of security.

No need for forking, full verification of Bitcoin can be achieved: GOAT Network combines decentralized Sequencer and BitVM2 protocol, making the BitVM2 protocol practical, directly verifying proof through Bitcoin script, inheriting the native security of Bitcoin. zkMIPS, as GOAT's scaling infrastructure, not only achieves 100% EVM compatibility, but also significantly accelerates proof generation and verification processes, bringing unprecedented ecological expansion capabilities to the GOAT Network.

Double Penalty Mechanism for Security: The GOAT Network is the first to introduce a "Double Punishment" mechanism in the Bitcoin Layer 2 network. This mechanism combines the native punishment mechanism of the Bitcoin verification layer and the punishment mechanism of the GOAT consensus layer, which effectively reduces the probability of dishonest behavior in the GOAT Rollup protocol. This mechanism specifically addresses potential risks such as double signatures, node downtime, and illegal reimbursement attacks on Sequencer nodes, comprehensively improving the security and reliability of the network.

This technological innovation marks a new era of decentralization for the Bitcoin second-layer network, setting a new industry benchmark for the future of blockchain technology.

In the combination of zkMIPS and BitVM2, zkMIPS not only optimizes the speed of Groth16 proof, but also performs a lot of optimization in the verification stage, including significantly reducing the complexity of calculating Miller Loop of Bitcoin script with Hints technique, segmenting Verifier circuit for commitment, compressing public input commitment of zkVM, ensuring that public input and superblock are on the same branch with Decentralized Sequencer, which to some extent simplifies the complexity of BitVM2's optimistic challenge process.

zkMIPS: The first zkVM based on the MIPS instruction set

zkMIPS is the first zkVM based on the MIPS instruction set, a mature instruction set whose benefits include:

• The instructions of MIPS32R2 are more abundant than those of RISCV32IM, among which the J/JAL series instructions have a jump length of up to 256MiB, which can be very convenient to realize in the scenario of static linking. MIPS32r2 has abundant bit operation instructions, which do not exist in RISCV32IM and need to use B extensions, and MIPS32r2 has conditional selection instructions such as MOVN/MOVZ, which can replace jump instructions in many scenarios, which can improve performance and reduce the number of instructions. MIPS32r2 has integer multiplication and addition instructions to improve performance and reduce the number of instructions. MIPS32r2 has SEH and SEB symbol extension instructions, which can easily perform symbol extension operations on char and short data.
• All instructions in MIPS32r2, as a whole, have been widely used for over 20 years, with no issues of interconnection between different modules; nor issues of turbulence that may arise due to copyright disputes. As an extension implementation rather than a complete implementation of the instruction set, there may be issues of mutual adaptation between extensions. The combination of certain extensions may lead to incomplete or excessively large issues. The MIPS instruction manual also provides a clearer and more detailed description of the behavior of the instructions. In the blockchain field, MIPS has been successfully applied to the verification of Optimism's Fraud Proof, which is based on the MIPS VM implementation.

zkMIPS has a complete set of features. Developers can prove any program written in widely used high-level languages such as Rust and Golang. zkMIPS provides a series of easy-to-use development toolkits, including ZKM Playground, ZKM-Project-Template, and ZKM Proof Network, to help projects and developers build their ZKP products with very low barriers.

zkMIPS helps developers ensure the security of circuit logic. Developers can use the most familiar language to implement any application and avoid zero-knowledge proof circuit audits. Unlike traditional ZKP development, zkMIPS strictly complies with the MIPS32r2 instruction set, so if developers have already audited the business logic of the application, they do not need to audit the circuit again.

ZKM provides a proof network to help developers and projects quickly generate proofs, support horizontal scaling, and truly achieve real-time proof generation. This enables developers and projects to build their decentralized Web3 applications with extreme efficiency. In addition, zkMIPS also supports a variety of extreme proof acceleration schemes, such as Precompiles.

zkMIPS has industry-leading use cases that support several innovative zkVM-enabled use cases, including GOAT Network's Bitcoin L2 and Metis' HybridRollup. And it is driving the widespread adoption of zkVM technology in multiple industries such as zkLLM, zkIdentity, etc.

zkMIPS, as the first zkVM based on the MIPS instruction set, combined with the mature ecosystem of MIPS and the ZKP infrastructure of ZKM, greatly promotes the rapid implementation of zkVM.