Bitlayer partners with three Bitcoin mining pools to advance BitVM adoption

Bitlayer has taken a major step toward real-world adoption of Bitcoin-native decentralized finance by partnering with three of the world’s largest Bitcoin mining pools.

According to an announcement made on Bitlayer’s official X account on May 27, the company has partnered with Bitcoin (BTC) mining pools Antpool, F2Pool, and SpiderPool. Together, the three mining pools represent close to 40% of the total Bitcoin network hashrate.

Their support will help move BitVM from concept to working infrastructure by enabling non-standard transactions, a crucial part of the system’s challenge-response design. NSTs are technically valid but often not relayed due to Bitcoin Core’s default settings.

With the three miners agreeing to process them, BitVM becomes much more usable. Through the BitVM Bridge, users can transfer Bitcoin into smart contract platforms without relying on central intermediaries.

This gives Bitcoin access to new applications like lending, yield farming, and multi-chain staking. Bitlayer’s approach adds smart contract functionality to Bitcoin without changing its core protocol or reducing its security. The new collaboration adds to Bitlayer’s recent integrations with networks like Sui (SUI), Arbitrum (ARB), Base, and Starknet (STRK).

These connections enable BTC to power applications such as lending, staking, and yield farming using Peg-BTC, a Bitcoin-backed token minted through the BitVM Bridge. Bitlayer launched on mainnet in April 2024, and currently boast total value locked of $413 million, as per DefiLlama data. The platform support more than 200 Bitcoin DeFi applications.

Since its launch, Bitlayer has raised over $20 million, including a Series A round led by Franklin Templeton and a follow-up led by Polychain Capital. As part of its next phase, the company is bringing on more validators and working with wallet platforms like Xverse and Binance Wallet to support growth.

The latest partnership brings Bitlayer’s vision of building tools to connect Bitcoin to more advanced financial systems much closer.