Ecosystem developers bring Bitcoin to the Cosmos network

The largest decentralized exchange (DEX) in the cosmos, Osmosis, along with Nomic and Kujira, will bring Bitcoin (BTC) to the nominal Inter-Blockchain Connections (IBC) protocol.

As announced at the Cosmoverse 2023 conference on October 3, users will be able to transfer Bitcoin to the Cosmos network via the Osmosis Nomic Bridge at a transaction fee of 1.5%. Users will receive Nomic Bitcoin (nBTC), an IBC-compatible token issued by Nomic Chain, on a one-to-one basis. nBTC can be bought, sold and used to provide liquidity on osmosis. They are also used in more than 50 space-related application chains. Sunny Aggarwal, founder of Osmosis commented:

“Bitcoin is in deep need of a DeFi ecosystem of applications, and Cosmos is in need of an underlying monetary asset that serves as the primary store of value. Nomic will help make this long-awaited union a Bitcoin-centric Cosmos a reality.”

Matt Bell, CEO of Turbofish, Nomic's co-founder and main contributor, said, “The Cosmos ecosystem has a seamless and secure way to accept BTC, so it's very important.” “Today's announcement marks the first time we've introduced the most seamless and secure way for users to access the Cosmos ecosystem with BTC,” he continued.

Native Bitcoin is coming to Osmosis.

Get ready for nBTC from @nomicbtc.

Here's everything you need to know. pic.twitter.com/YuYX9jQamV

— Osmosis ⚡️ (@osmosiszone) October 3, 2023

The nBTC interchain update will be released on October 27th and is expected to go live on October 30th. Through a separate partnership with centralized financial protocol Kujira, users can send BTC to a backend Sonar wallet address and keep nBTC themselves. Similar pedigrees can restore users' BTC and nBTC wallets. nBTC is also Kujira's native stablecoin USK and can be used as collateral for borrowing and lending in the ecosystem. Additionally, users can bid for liquid nBTC collateral.

Nomic developers say that there will be a hard cap of 21 BTCs for the cross-chain bridge in the early stages of the nBTC launch. “When the bridge reaches its capacity limit, applications will not be able to generate deposit addresses and users will not be able to deposit additional BTC. This parameter will be controlled by Nomic DAO management in an upcoming update,” the developers wrote.

#Bitcoin is coming to the cosmos via @nomicbtc at the end of October.

We want all good people to know the various use cases available immediately on the Kujira network, so you can put your $nBTC to work when it arrives.

It will be delicious.

pic.twitter.com/DLx2lzz8hs

— Kujira (@TeamKujira) October 3, 2023

Update October 3, 2023, 20:20 UTC: This article has been updated to reflect comments from Sunny Aggarwal, founder of Osmosis, and Matt Bell, CEO of Turbofish.

Magazine: Singer Vérité's fan-first approach to Web3, music NFTs and community building