Vitalis Salis - Making Bitcoin Useful Again with Trustless Lending

Zoe Paraskevopoulou - Can You Trust Your Smart Contracts 100%?

(00:00) Intro (01:39) Journey into Blockchain (04:09) Why Formal Verification for Smart Contracts (08:39) ACT Framework (12:37) State Transition Systems & Mathematical Models (21:37) Practical Application (28:10) LLMs & The Future of Formal Verification (31:29) Vision

Giorgos Tsimos - Is FasterPay faster than FastPay?

Timestamps: (0:00) – Intro (3:17) – Science and Engineering Synergy at Pod (9:12) – Pod Network's Latest Research (13:22) – Recovery Mechanisms (21:12) – Future Research Directions & Advice for New Researchers (26:15) – Outro

Lefteris Kokoris-Kogias - Coding Techniques in Walrus for Massive Storage

Timestamps: (00:00) Intro (2:38) Lefteris' Role and Background in Blockchain (4:56) Development of Sui and Mist's Other Products (12:27) Technical Details of Walrus and Seal (27:36) Future of Decentralized Storage

Jason Milionis - Are Faster Block Times Eating up MEV?

(00:00) Intro (02:00) Journey Into Blockchain Research (05:34) Explaining Loss Versus Rebalancing (12:29) Reducing Losses Through Faster Block Times (25:11) Future Research Directions (30:00) Papers and Resources

Vitalis Salis - Making Bitcoin Useful Again with Trustless Lending

Timestamps: (00:16) Introduction and background (03:00) Joining Babylon (05:43) The core idea behind Trustless Bitcoin Vaults (07:28) What “trustless lending” actually means (12:01) Deep diving into the protocol (14:38) BitVM and garbled circuits (18:48) Resources & recommended reading (21:30) Roadmap and upcoming milestones (22:22) What's next for the space (24:55) Advice for engineers building on Bitcoin Description: In the sixth episode of Honest Majority, we speak with Vitalis Salis, Head of Engineering at Babylon, about making Bitcoin useful again through trustless lending. Using the example of a BTC holder taking a stablecoin loan while keeping Bitcoin as collateral, the conversation explores what “trustless” means in practice and how enforceable guarantees can be designed without introducing custody. We discuss Trustless Bitcoin Vaults, how BTC can be locked into UTXOs under predefined conditions, and how supported-chain outcomes can be used to coordinate lending logic. The episode dives into Bitcoin’s constraints, BitVM and off-chain enforcement mechanisms, and the broader implications of extending Bitcoin’s security model beyond passive holding.