To our valued community and partners,

At Mintlayer, we began with a simple vision: Bitcoin should be more than the world’s most trusted store of value; it should be the foundation of an open, resilient financial system. People should be able to unlock yield and utility from their BTC without surrendering custody or relying on intermediaries. We believe the next chapter of Bitcoin finance is where regulated yield is at the intersection of self-custody, putting Bitcoin to work while preserving the principles that make it valuable. That vision has guided every decision we’ve made, and it has translated into meaningful progress.

Over the past year, we have laid the technical groundwork for Bitcoin finance to become a reality. On the Mintlayer Network side, we advanced consensus and node architecture, strengthened mainnet security, and improved staking and delegation. We created the infrastructure for native Bitcoin atomic swaps at the protocol level. ZK Thunder, our Layer 3 testnet, is live with one second settlements and full EVM compatibility, offering high speed execution that connects to the broader developer ecosystem. All of this follows a security-first design with a Bitcoin style UTXO model, non Turing complete base contracts, and a Rust codebase. We share updates in our monthly development reports and invite the community to review and interact with our open source codebase, now exceeding 300,000 lines. These milestones are the foundation for a Bitcoin centered ecosystem.

The industry is converging on real world assets as a durable use case, with institutions and investors seeking credible paths to regulated yield. We have been preparing preemptively, establishing a legal and compliance framework in the United Arab Emirates, and we are engaging regulators to reach global audiences in line with our roadmap. This will serve as the backbone for upcoming products and funds that allow Bitcoin holders to collateralize their assets securely on the Bitcoin network and gain access to stable yield produced from Real World Assets (RWAs). Proprietary AI from the Mintlayer team will power the fund’s management, strengthening asset selection, risk monitoring, and operational efficiency. Our initial goal is to help investors and institutions put idle BTC to work in traditional finance models, providing a regulated, real world path to returns. On a second stage of implementation, we are focused on interoperability, opening doors to stablecoins and other networks to bring stable yield opportunities across the crypto industry. 

Looking forward, our priorities are clear for the next 36 months on our roadmap. We will continue supporting partners on key ecosystem projects such as the DEX, Token Factory, wallet integrations, and expand developer tooling. On the RWA side, our upcoming platform will move from private preparation to initial public launch steps, supported by the regulatory framework we are establishing in the United Arab Emirates. We will continue evolving ZK Thunder while maintaining the stability of the core network. Each of these initiatives carries the same purpose: to activate idle Bitcoin and deliver real world utility without sacrificing the principles that make it valuable.

We would like to thank you for your continued support. If our mission resonates with you, join the conversation in our channels, test what we ship, and tell us where we can improve. We are committed to delivering a reliable infrastructure for Bitcoin finance, and we look forward to doing it together with you.

With appreciation,
Enrico, Anna, and the Mintlayer Team

‍