- A grant proposal submitted to Optimism’s governance forum requests $5,000 to deploy a zero-knowledge system called “BitcoinMerkleVerifier_ZK” for verifying Bitcoin transactions directly on the network
- The system uses zk-SNARK proofs built with SP1 or RISC Zero zkVM technology and a Groth16 verifier, requiring roughly 200,000 gas to verify a Bitcoin Merkle proof on-chain
- The approach avoids the trusted multisig bridges most existing Bitcoin-to-Ethereum interoperability solutions rely on, and the proposal states contracts and tests have already been built
A grant proposal posted to Optimism’s governance forum on November 7, 2026 by a contributor identified as Justin Quinn lays out a plan to let the Optimism network verify Bitcoin transactions directly, without relying on the kind of trusted multisignature bridge operators that most existing Bitcoin interoperability solutions depend on today. The proposed system, named BitcoinMerkleVerifier_ZK, would use zero-knowledge cryptography to prove that a given Bitcoin transaction is included in a block’s Merkle tree, the cryptographic data structure Bitcoin uses to efficiently summarize all transactions within a block.
Technically, the system is built using SP1 or RISC Zero zkVM technology, both frameworks for generating zero-knowledge proofs of general computation, paired with a Groth16 verifier, a widely used and relatively gas-efficient proof system for actually checking those proofs on-chain. According to the proposal, verifying a single Bitcoin Merkle proof this way would cost approximately 200,000 gas on Optimism, a figure the proposal frames as gas-optimized relative to alternative verification approaches.
The core appeal of this approach, as the proposal describes it, is trust minimization. Most current methods for letting an Ethereum-based network like Optimism know about and act on Bitcoin transactions rely on a set of trusted intermediaries, typically a multisignature arrangement, who attest to what has happened on the Bitcoin blockchain. A zero-knowledge verification system instead lets the network cryptographically confirm a transaction’s inclusion in Bitcoin’s own blockchain directly, removing the need to trust any intermediary’s honesty or correct operation.
The proposal requests a relatively modest $5,000 in funding, intended to cover testnet deployment, a security audit, and eventual mainnet launch. Notably, the author states that the underlying smart contracts and accompanying tests have already been built prior to the grant request, meaning the requested funds would primarily support deployment and auditing costs rather than initial development from scratch.
Trustless Bitcoin verification on Ethereum layer-2 networks has been a long-sought goal within the broader effort to make Bitcoin’s liquidity and security usable within DeFi applications built on other chains, and a working, gas-efficient zero-knowledge implementation, even a modestly funded one, represents a concrete technical step in that direction. The full proposal is posted on Optimism’s own governance forum.
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