tBTC became the first decentralized, permissionless, and scalable way for Bitcoin holders to access the Solana blockchain, opening a host of new Decentralized Finance (DeFi) opportunities to BTC holders.
This is tBTC’s fifth new integration since May and its first with a non-Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) chain. It was enabled by tBTC’s collaboration with cross-chain communications protocol Wormhole and follows the introduction of redemptions for BTC depositors in July.
“This is a particularly exciting time for tBTC to join the Solana ecosystem,” said Ben Sparango, Head of Business Development at the Solana Foundation. “We are witnessing the dawn of DeFi 2.0 in our ecosystem and believe tBTC can be an integral part of that.”
tBTC allows Bitcoin holders to participate in DeFi ecosystems through a permissionless, open-source protocol. Each tBTC token is backed by 1 BTC held in reserve, which is secured by threshold cryptography.
The Threshold-Wormhole collaboration also includes a bootstrapping campaign with the potential to unlock up to 26,000 BTC of liquidity. The launch of redemptions triggered the plan’s next phase: the injection of 800 BTC in fresh liquidity.
While users have been able to mint tBTC since V2 launched in January, the ability to easily convert back to BTC is expected to attract retail investors.
“With a total of six networks now open to Bitcoin holders and many more integrations in the works, tBTC is well on its way to becoming Bitcoin, everywhere,” said Matt Luongo, contributor to Threshold DAO, the decentralized organization behind tBTC.
Since May, tBTC has launched on five chains beyond Ethereum – Arbitrum, Optimism, Polygon, Base, and now Solana – as the team works toward opening all of DeFi to Bitcoin holders. This momentum, coupled with the liquidity injection, has spurred a doubling of tBTC’s Total Value Locked this year.
As with previous integrations, the Solana deployment relies upon novel threshold cryptography that allows tBTC to operate across chains without liquidity fragmentation.