Widespread adoption of bitcoin (btc) won’t happen until it connects to the ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), the first entry point for many real-world assets moving on-chain, a Web3 executive maintains.
Speaking to Cointelegraph, the founder of cross-chain infrastructure company Botanix Labs, Willem Schroé, stated that bitcoin “needs to start playing in the EVM world” in order to build real-world use cases to increase its adoption and utility.
“bitcoin is the most technologically secure and truly decentralized protocol (and) the EVM has proven to be the application layer for the global financial system,” Schroé said.
Our Botanix protocol positions ethereum as a layer 2 solution in addition to bitcoin?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”>#bitcoin.
We have added ethereum to the secure foundation of the bitcoin network to take advantage of the security of its proof-of-work mechanism.
Plus, enjoy the ease of development of ethereum.
– Botanix Laboratories (@BotanixLabs) September 25, 2023
While bitcoin is typically used as a peer-to-peer payment system or to store value, Schroé said its potential will not be realized unless the cryptocurrency can connect to the broader financial system, such as stock and commodity markets.
Connecting bitcoin to ethereum-based real-world assets, stablecoins, decentralized finance, and non-fungible tokens through the EVM is the first step in that direction, Schroé argued.
“That’s a tremendous amount of value and development waiting to happen.”
Schroé’s Botanix Labs aims to connect the bitcoin and ethereum ecosystems through its “Spiderchain”, a proof-of-stake Layer 2 that implements EVM-to-EVM bridges to allow bitcoin to interact with EVM.
bitcoin and ethereum may seem opposite, but they can coexist and complement each other.
However, this presents some challenges.
Multi-chain ecosystems with cross-chain bridges can have security and centralization risks, hampering the potential for collaboration.
– Botanix Laboratories (@BotanixLabs) October 2, 2023
Staked assets are protected by a decentralized multi-signature mechanism and their design does not require bitcoin to be forked.
Schroé believes that current solutions involving bitcoin wrapped on ethereum and other EVM-compatible chains are problematic and argues that they are susceptible to censorship and regulatory scrutiny as they are operated by the centralized company BitGo, based in the United States.
A similar proposal to bring ethereum functionality to bitcoin via “broadcast chains” is also being proposed, also known as bitcoin Improvement Proposal-300, which is being discussed again by bitcoin developers. If implemented, it would allow “sidechains” to be built into the network.
On October 9, bitcoin developer Robin Linus published a whitepaper titled “BitVM: Compute Anything on bitcoin,” detailing how ethereum-like optimistic rollup smart contracts could be created on the bitcoin network.
Related: Bitcoiners from El Salvador teach 12-year-olds how to send sats
Unlike Spiderchain, BIP-300 would require bitcoin to be forked and would be activated by miners, similar to the Taproot soft fork in November 2021 that paved the way for the nft-emulating Ordinals and BRC-20 tokens.
BIP creator Paul Sztroc says those in favor of BIP-300 believe it will offer new privacy and scalability use cases for bitcoin, among other benefits.
Until now in @tabconf:
* Many Bip300 pros – popular use cases are privacy, scaling and experimentation (get new OP codes now)
*A very popular question is: when is my debate with Peter Todd (Fridays at 2pm)?
* Many complained about out-of-place dialogue on Twitter and meaningless propaganda.
*…—Paul Sztorc (@Truthcoin) September 7, 2023
However, not everyone likes the idea of expanding the bitcoin ecosystem beyond its current use cases.
Cory Klippsten, CEO of btc-only exchange Swan bitcoin, believe Chaincasting and solutions that bring other assets to bitcoin will bring an influx of scammers.
Ammous saifedeanThe author of The bitcoin Standard, opposes the idea of issuing altcoins in bitcoin, suggesting that “good money” is the only necessary token.
People only think tokens are a good idea because we live in a world of broken money. Good money is the only pledge anyone needs. bitcoin is going to detokenize the world. https://t.co/q8Nhc7XcOX
– Saifedean Ammous (@saifedean) August 28, 2023
However, Schroé said he believes uniting bitcoin and ethereum could produce a new range of applications “with decentralization and security as first principles.”
“EVM is the winning virtual machine and bitcoin is the best money,” he said.
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