I'm excited to share that Burak, a Bitcoin developer known for exposing a bug in the Lightning Network in 2022, is working on a new Bitcoin layer 2 project called "Brollups." This innovative solution aims to bring more decentralized finance (DeFi) use cases to Bitcoin, supporting over 90% of them, including NFT sales and token orders on decentralized exchanges (DEXs).

Burak, who previously introduced the Ark Protocol as a competitor to the Lightning Network, explained that Brollups offer a Bitcoin-native rollup design. This means transactions can be bundled without the need for a Bitcoin hard fork or issuing a non-Bitcoin token. In a recent Medium post, Burak mentioned that Brollups is still in the design phase, with a testnet rollout planned for later this year.

Brollups will enable seamless DeFi operations on Bitcoin, such as listing NFTs for Bitcoin payments or executing token sell orders on DEXs, all while being atomically executed, verifiable, scalable, and enforceable on Bitcoin. These rollups are deeply integrated with Bitcoin and operate natively as a payable construct.

Managed by "operators" who provide liquidity and advance the rollup state through regular Bitcoin transactions, Brollups will run on the Bitcoin Virtual Machine. The Bitcoin community has praised Burak for developing this solution without needing a hard fork or a new token.

Back in October 2022, Burak gained attention by exploiting the Lightning Network with a 998-of-999 multisignature Taproot transaction, leading to an emergency update. Although no funds were stolen, this incident highlighted a Taproot upgrade flaw.

Since then, Taproot transactions surged with the launch of the Ordinals protocol but have recently decreased. Brollups joins other scaling projects like Drivechain and Spiderchain, aiming to enhance Bitcoin's DeFi functionality. In May 2022, Burak also launched Ark, a layer-2 solution focused on payments without the need for payment channels.