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May 29, 2025

Welcome Home Litecoin: BOS Brings ZK Rollups and Programmable Tokens to Bitcoin's Silver Twin

The UTXO revolution is expanding beyond Bitcoin.

BitcoinOS (BOS) today announces that it is bringing its full UTXO and ZK innovation to the Litecoin ecosystem. BOS will enable a shared programmable token economy between Litecoin and Bitcoin using the Charms token standard, and pioneer the first trustless ZK rollup for Litecoin upon the LitVM infrastructure stack.

This collaboration marks a historic moment where the crypto industry comes full circle, proving that the secure, decentralized UTXO chains once dismissed by innovation are making a glorious and united comeback.

Bitcoin and Litecoin Unite With Charms

Times are changing. Over the past three years, developers have shattered the myth that UTXO chains can't support advanced functionality, proving that innovations like NFTs (eg. Ordinals) and fungible tokens (eg. Runes) can thrive on Bitcoin-like architectures.

BOS takes these discoveries to the next level with Charms: Programmable, Portable Assets on Bitcoin and Beyond. 

Announced on Bitcoin Pizza Day in May 2025, Charms is a smart asset protocol enabling programmable tokens, NFTs, or app state fragments that live natively on Bitcoin or other UTXO chains.

Charms are client-side validated using recursive zero-knowledge proofs (zkVMs), and programmable, using general-purpose languages like Rust and (soon) WebAssembly. Unlike Ordinals or Runes, Charms can represent logic such as DEX orders, NFT metadata, lending rules, and more on Bitcoin.

Incredibly, charms are also chain-agnostic, meaning they can “beam” from one chain to another without bridges or custodians. Charms embeds logic directly in the token itself, not in chain-specific smart contracts, allowing tokens to move freely across chains while preserving complex rules.

BOS is now implementing its revolutionary Charms token standard on Litecoin, creating the first programmable assets that can seamlessly live between Bitcoin and Litecoin without needing bridges.

This breakthrough technology will enable:

  • BTC to move directly to Litecoin wallets as ‘enchanted bitcoin’ (xBTC) without custodial bridges
  • LTC to flow seamlessly into Bitcoin wallets as ‘enchanted litecoin’ (xLTC) with the same security guarantees
  • Unified programmable assets that can exist natively on either network without bridges
  • Cross-chain smart contract execution between the Bitcoin and Litecoin ecosystems

Why does it make sense to unify Bitcoin and Litecoin?

The Perfect Partnership: Gold Meets Silver

Bitcoin and Litecoin have always been brothers in the crypto ecosystem, and the communities of both networks have remained uniquely amicable in crypto's otherwise tribal landscape.

Both Bitcoin and Litecoin are fixed-supply, proof-of-work-secured, UTXO chains that have remained laser-focused on their mission as peer-to-peer digital money. With Litecoin's 84 million supply (4X Bitcoin's 21 million) and 2.5-minute block times (4X faster than Bitcoin's 10 minutes), many have long called LTC the "silver to Bitcoin's gold."

This similarity runs deeper than just specifications. Litecoin has historically served as Bitcoin's testing ground for major innovations, with both SegWit and Lightning Network being successfully deployed on Litecoin before making their way to Bitcoin. Litecoin has also introduced Mimblewimble Extension Blocks (MWEB), a powerful advancement once considered by Bitcoin developers like Adam Back. Though it never fully materialized on the original chain, it was added to Litecoin in 2022.

MWEB adds optional transaction confidentiality and enhanced fungibility. This gives Litecoin users the ability to transact more privately when needed. MWEB also provides quantum resistance, a major concern for long-term preservation of assets in the face of future cryptographic threats.

Unifying Bitcoin and Litecoin through Charms allows users of either chain or asset to experience the best of both worlds – and then some – without changing a single line of either protocol’s underlying code. The precious stability and purity of both chains remain preserved, and both of their communities can become whole again.

The ZK Revolution Comes to Litecoin

Thanks to Bitcoin and Litecoin’s shared DNA, many of the recent discoveries made on the former chain can be replicated on the latter, including those related to ZK tech. 

BOS made history in July 2024 by verifying the first-ever zero-knowledge proof on Bitcoin mainnet, unlocking infinite scalability and programmability without compromising the network's core properties. Now, after awakening Bitcoin's latent potential, BOS is bringing this same revolutionary technology to Litecoin.

BOS now plans to launch the first-ever ZK rollup on Litecoin as part of the LitVM stack - Litecoin's emergent ZK Omnichain by Lunar Digital Assets. 

The rollup will expand LTC's interoperability and functionality with blazing-fast, EVM-compatible smart contracts.

This means LTC holders can now:

  • Trustlessly bridge their LTC to more scalable, programmable execution environments
  • Access advanced RWA and DeFi functionality while maintaining Litecoin L1's proof-of-work security
  • Benefit from dramatically reduced transaction costs through rollup efficiency
  • Interact with smart contracts without sacrificing decentralization or security

Meanwhile, thanks to AggLayer, BOS’ Litecoin rollup can be interoperable with Ethereum’s broader web of blockchains, ending Litecoin’s isolation from the programmable Web 3 world. At last, a widely adopted worldwide cryptocurrency can tap into the applications and economies of modern blockchains. 

The UTXO Renaissance

This integration represents more than just a technical collaboration - it's a vindication of the UTXO model that the crypto industry once wrote off as obsolete. While the ecosystem fragmented across countless competing chains, Bitcoin and Litecoin quietly maintained their focus on being sound, decentralized money.

Now, with BOS proving that UTXO chains can be infinitely programmable, scalable, and interoperable, we're witnessing the return of crypto's founding principles. The secure, battle-tested networks that prioritized stability over flashy features are emerging as the ultimate foundation for the decentralized future, and forming a united “superchain” combining the best of all worlds. 

"The industry is coming full circle," says Edan Yago, contributor to BitcoinOS. "The crypto ecosystem spent years building on less secure, more centralized alternatives because we thought Bitcoin and Litecoin couldn't evolve. Now we're proving that the most trusted networks can do everything the newer chains can do - and do it better."

A United Front for Digital Money

By merging the capabilities of Bitcoin and Litecoin through ZK technology and programmable assets, this partnership creates a unified UTXO supernetwork that combines:

  • Bitcoin's $2 trillion in institutional credibility and unmatched security
  • Litecoin's faster block times, optional privacy via MWEB, and quantum resistance
  • Cardano’s eUTXO programmability and established DeFi ecosystem
  • Seamless interoperability without trust assumptions
  • A combined community focused on the real-world adoption of digital money

The timing couldn't be better. As institutions increasingly adopt Bitcoin and governments explore strategic Bitcoin reserves, having a unified, interoperable network with Litecoin provides added scalability, privacy, and flexibility needed for global adoption while maintaining the security and decentralization that made these networks trusted in the first place.

The Future is UTXO

Crypto isn't about choosing between security and functionality - it's about unlocking the full potential of the networks that got it right from the beginning. Bitcoin and Litecoin's UTXO architecture, once seen as a limitation, is now their greatest strength in a world demanding both innovation and reliability.

We proudly welcome Litecoin into the BOS family 🟠🤝⚪️

Follow BitcoinOS on X, and get involved with the community on Discord and Telegram. Make sure to also follow Litecoin and LitVM on X.