Hemi Labs focused on ‘marrying the king and queen of crypto’

Hemi Labs, the brainchild of former Bitcoin core developer Jeff Garzik, has secured $15 million in a funding round led by Binance Labs, Breyer Capital and Big Brain Holdings to develop its new blockchain network, Hemi.

The network is designed to integrate Bitcoin and Ethereum into a single, modular system. The investment will support Hemi’s development ahead of its planned mainnet launch in late 2024. The project’s incentivized testnet is already live.

Garzik is skeptical of most of the projects calling themselves layer-2’s whether on Ethereum or Bitcoin. He prefers an approach that tries to “unify the experience across both chains.”

“What comes next after Bitcoin L2s? A next generation network marrying the king and queen of crypto, Bitcoin and Ethereum,” Garzik told Blockworks.

A central feature of the network is the Hemi Virtual Machine (hVM), which embeds a Bitcoin node within the Ethereum environment, specifically a custom version of the Geth execution client.

Hemi’s consensus mechanism, Proof-of-Proof (PoP), is also novel, arising out of field tests by Veriblock, prior to Hemi Labs’ acquisition of the company in 2023. Veriblock co-founder Max Sanchez came aboard as Hemi’s CTO.

“We have myself, Max and other Bitcoin core dev-level developers building deep in the Geth and Bitcoin core engine,” Garzik said.

This integration allows developers to create dapps that operate across both networks using familiar Ethereum tools.

Both Bitcoin and Ethereum are evolving into settlement layers, with transaction activity migrating to connected networks.

“Where we think our special sauce is on the Ethereum side, where there is very little strong marriage to Bitcoin,” Garzik said, in contrast to the “ton of L2s” on Bitcoin. “They’re all staple gunning [Ethereum Virtual machine (EVM)] on some sort of Bitcoin anchoring, but it’s a very poor integration.”

The hVM incorporates new byte codes into the EVM that talk directly to Bitcoin, Garzik explained.

“In Solidity, we can trigger Bitcoin transactions sent out on the Bitcoin main chain. We can parse incoming Bitcoin UTXOs that are inbound payments from Solidity from the EVM,” Garzik said.

The Hemi Bitcoin Kit (hBK) enables developers to work with Bitcoin more effectively, unlocking features such as trustless smart contracts and decentralized financial products that were difficult to implement directly on Bitcoin.

“This is the Bitcoin [developer] experience that I’ve wanted for almost 14 years of my being in Bitcoin,” Garzik said, pointing to the difficulty in working with Bitcoin’s limited scripting.

“Only recently have you had technologies like the BitVM vault and some of these more advanced technologies and Bitcoin anchoring,” he said.

Read more: Bitcoin rollups may be closer than we think

The PoP consensus mechanism predates BitVM but enables what Garzik calls “superfinality,” securing transactions with minimal delay — 2 hours or 12 Bitcoin blocks for “full finality” — in contrast to other optimistic fraud proof systems.

By using normal Bitcoin transactions, “it’s maximally censorship resistant [and] maximally compatible,” Garzik said.

Hemi does plan to support BitVM vaults as a primary Bitcoin bridging solution — Garzik prefers the term “tunneling” as one on-ramp, in addition to an Ethereum bridge. In 2025, he expects to add bridging capability to Solana, Avalanche, and “other ones that have staying power in the market.”

The team also plans to implement the Lightning Network for instant payments.

Garzik described the Hemi project as a practical step toward greater interoperability between leading blockchain platforms. He emphasized that the network is designed to offer developers a modular approach that can adapt to changes in the ecosystem while maintaining strong security guarantees.

“I like to call Ethereum the Grand Central Station of crypto, and Bitcoin the root of the crypto tree.”

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