Robin Linus is a Bitcoin researcher best known as the creator of BitVM, a computing paradigm that enables expressive smart contracts on Bitcoin without requiring a soft fork. He is also president of ZeroSync, an organization working on zero-knowledge proof technology for Bitcoin.
BitVM
Linus published the BitVM whitepaper in 2023, proposing a method to verify arbitrary computations on Bitcoin using a challenge-response protocol between a prover and a verifier. BitVM opened the door to trust-minimized bridges, rollups, and other advanced constructions on Bitcoin that were previously thought to require protocol changes. The work has been one of the most significant technical contributions to Bitcoin in recent years, sparking a wave of new development around Bitcoin programmability.
ZeroSync
As president of ZeroSync, Linus leads work on applying zero-knowledge proofs to Bitcoin. The project aims to enable instant verification of Bitcoin’s blockchain state without downloading the full chain, among other applications.