We are excited to announce that TestBTC can now be bridged to Flare Coston via FAssets, developed by Flare Labs.

Starting today, users can access the following features at https://fasset-beta.flarelabs.org:

• Mint FTestBTC with TestBTC
• Redeem FTestBTC for TestBTC
• Provide collateral to the FTestBTC pool and earn rewards

Bifrost Wallet now supports FBTC, enabling seamless participation for TestBTC holders.

FTestBTC, the latest asset addition supported on the FAssets protocol, is an ERC-20 token on Flare Coston. When FAssets is live on the Flare mainnet, BTC holders can mint FBTC to unlock DeFi opportunities such as trading, swapping, lending, borrowing, and bridging to other chains.

Later this week, we will also activate the pools and dashboard for FBTC, allowing users to start contributing to the TestBTC vault of an agent and earn test rewards from that.

Why Are We Building FBTC?

FAssets is a trust-minimized BTC bridge that provides a decentralized alternative to existing BTC bridging solutions.

FAssets addresses bridging challenges by implementing:

• Overcollateralization: FAssets are overcollateralized by multiple assets, including BTC, stablecoins, ETH, and FLR. These assets are locked in smart contracts that ensure the minted FAssets can always be redeemed for the underlying assets they represent or compensated by collateral, providing verifiable economic security.
• Flare Time Series Oracle (FTSO): Flare’s enshrined oracle, FTSO, provides accurate and decentralized price feeds and collateral ratio calculations.
• Flare Data Connector (FDC): FDC is another of Flare’s enshrined oracles, using independent attestation providers to read and verify the state of other blockchains. It confirms minters’ payments on connected chains, such as the Bitcoin network, and brings payment data onto Flare. Once confirmed, the minting process can be executed, sending FAssets (e.g., FBTC) to the minter’s account.

FTestBTC vs FTestXRP

Have you been testing the Open Beta with FTestXRP? If so, you’re pretty much set to go, as the processes are very similar:

1. Choosing an Agent: On the dashboard, you’ll see a list of available agents as well as their vault addresses and associated fees.
2. Mint Fee: This is the commission you will pay to agents for minting FAssets. For instance, if an agent fee is 0.25%, minting 20 FTestXRP will require a 0.05 FTestXRP fee.
3. Available Lots: This is the number of lots of FTestXRP that are available to mint from each agent.

Key differences:

• Longer wait times for minting & redeeming due to BTC confirmation periods.
• Lot value: 0.0004 BTC = 1 Lot
• Faucet distribution: 0.000039 BTC per claim. It usually takes 1 hour to receive the requested testBTC due to the one-hour Bitcoin confirmation time.
• TestBTC faucet: https://bitcoinfaucet.uo1.net/
• Add Bitcoin Test Network (testBTC) and FTestBTC by selecting them on “Receive” in your Bifrost wallet.
• For agents, please be aware that the required underlying assets for FTestBTC have changed from 100% to 95%. This adjustment is due to the smaller lot size and the longer confirmation time needed for BTC transactions. For any further questions, please join the FAssets Agents support group.

Happy testing: https://fasset-beta.flarelabs.org