PANews reported on July 16 that according to Cointelegraph, Bitlayer, a Bitcoin DeFi infrastructure invested by traditional asset management giant Franklin Templeton, announced the launch of the smart contract cross-chain bridge BitVM on the mainnet. The solution allows users to lock Bitcoin into smart contracts and convert it into a packaged asset Peg-BTC (YBTC) that can interact across chains. It has now been integrated with networks such as Sui, Base and Arbitrum. Bitlayer said that the bridge solution uses a single-signature verification mechanism to optimize security, aiming to enable native BTC liquidity to enter the smart contract ecosystem without changing the underlying Bitcoin protocol.