anetaBTC, decentralized wrapped BTC

anetaBTC is a decentralized, fully on-chain, wrapped BTC product that allows users to seamlessly unlock their BTC value on Cardano and Ergo.

anetaBTC is a research-driven protocol, just like Cardano and Ergo. anetaBTC is developed by CS Ph.D.'s from MIT, Helsinki, and Moscow.

The birth of AnetaBTC is the combination of concepts from research papers including but not limited to Bitcoin, wBTC, REN, Ergo, and Interlay. The key part of our approach is writing smart contracts that send Bitcoin to a vault if a user wants to mint anetaBTC. Upon minting, users will be able to freely use anetaBTC as a Bitcoin-backed asset on the Cardano and Ergo blockchains.

In the case of anetaBTC, instead of users sending Bitcoin to a custodian, it is sent to a vault that is a smart contract that stores the Bitcoin, mints anetaBTC, and then sends the anetaBTC to the connected wallet.

For redeeming BTC, users simply initiate the redeem and send their anetaBTC back to the vault and the smart contract will release the Bitcoin back to the user when it successfully confirms receiving anetaBTC.

Additionally, there is a relay chain that is connected to the Bitcoin blockchain that communicates with the anetaBTC bridge. The relay chain sends the user's Bitcoin to the anetaBTC bridge which has an incorporated Bitcoin wallet where the user's assets are held.

The anetaBTC bridge also communicates with the Ergo node and relays information directly to the Ergo blockchain. During this, the anetaBTC bridge will execute the issue or redeem the desired asset and send the token to the user directly from the vault.

The budget will be 100% distributed to our research and engineering team. We have been bootstrapping up until now and this grant will allow us to continue paying our engineers. The release date for Beta V1 is Q1 2022.

Resources:

Litepaper V1.0: https://medium.com/@anetaBTC/anetabtc-litepaper-v1-0-171f29b3276a

Community Airdrop Fund: https://medium.com/@anetaBTC/neta-community-airdrop-fund-32a5c6d2be45

Latest Technical Update: https://medium.com/@anetaBTC/meet-the-team-technical-update-for-october-31-2021-fca19cc5378a