Basic Botanix EVM Information

A quick refresher on some basic concepts

Under construction

All introductory and advanced concepts can be found in our documentation. This page merely gives a short overview of some of the most important concepts.

What is Botanix?

Botanix Labs builds the first fully decentralized EVM-equivalent Layer 2 on Bitcoin, where the ease and versatility of EVM meets the decentralization and security of Bitcoin. Funds on Botanix are secured in a series of successive multisigs between Botanix Orchestrators, called the Spiderchain. The blockchain itself, we call the Botanix EVM.

Building blocks

There are four main building blocks to the Botanix Federation:

Peg-in

Simply said, peg-in means the process of transferring Bitcoin from its parent chain to the Botanix EVM. Users require a mechanism to move their on-chain Bitcoin from Layer 1 to Layer 2 on the Spiderchain EVM.

The Spiderchain EVM utilizes the internal taproot key to encode the Layer 2 address where the funds should be directed. As a result, a taproot address is generated, allowing users to repeatedly send funds to it. Following confirmation(s), a pegin proof can be constructed to verify that the funds have been successfully sent.

Peg-out

Peg-out means the transferring of Bitcoin from the Spiderchain EVM chain back to the Bitcoin parent chain.

For this case, users provide any bitcoin address and sats amount that would like to withdraw. The Spiderchain EVM nodes will collect a quorum of signatures and release the funds

Federation

The ultimate goal for the Botanix EVM is to become fully permissionless and decentralized. However, to begin, the Botanix EVM will start with a federation of maximum 15 members (V1). At this point, the ecosystem includes Botanix Labs nodes, adhering to the standards set by the Botanix EVM protocol, namely verifying pegins, verifying pegouts and following the clique Proof of Authority (PoA) consensus for block production.

Block selection: The Botanix v1 federation employs a round-robin selection mechanism, akin to the one described in the clique spec (EIP255), for choosing block producers.

At this point, anyone will be able to join the network but will not be part of the federation that produces the blocks.

Multisig

Botanix uses threshold cryptography to secure the multisig (FROST). FROST is a threshold signature scheme that splits a Schnorr signing key into n shares for a threshold t, enabling t or more participants to collectively generate a signature valid with the verifying key.

Reth

Powered by Reth: The Epitome of Reliability

At the heart of the Botanix EVM lies the power of Reth, a paradigm-sponsored version of Ethereum crafted in Rust. By forking Reth, we have constructed a resilient and dependable framework, one that mirrors Ethereum's expansive capabilities.