BOB, a ‘Hybrid’ Layer-2 Blockchain Mixing Bitcoin and Ethereum, Raises $10M

BOB, a hybrid layer-2 network – sitting atop the Bitcoin blockchain, but with Ethereum compatibility – has raised $10 million in seed funding.

The round was led by Castle Island Ventures and included participation from Mechanism Ventures, Bankless Ventures, CMS Ventures, UTXO Management, along with angel investors Dan Held and Domo, creator of the BRC-20 token standard.

BOB’s aim is to roll out the first Bitcoin layer 2 with Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) compatibility. EVM is Ethereum’s native processing system that allows developers to create smart contracts. The name BOB is an acronym for “Build on Bitcoin.”

Bringing Ethereum-style contracts to Bitcoin is seen as something of a sticky wicket due to concerns that the computations would place a strain on the network and degrade performance for other users.

However, the spirit of developing atop Bitcoin received some fresh impetus last year through the BitVM proposal, as laid out in a whitepaper in October. Under BitVM, computations would be performed off-chain and then verified on-chain, similar to the mechanics of optimistic rollups on Ethereum, meaning there would be no risk of clogging up the network at other users’ expense.