Ethereum founder calls for Bitcoin Bridge on twitter. Vitalik Buterin the creator of ethereum suggests that Bitcoin and Ethereum should come together to help transactions become easier for users. He claimed there was an embarrassing lack of bridges. He suggested that people should start using a Uniswap-like system that would allow users to bridge between Bitcoin and Ethereum.
The problem that faces the crypto community in the past has been the fact that there are multiple different blockchains on which tokens are based. The two most famous ones are Bitcoin obviously, and Ethereum. Ethereum works on a different system and even has different features. For instance, in Ethereum you can even add in scripts or programs that are stored as smart contracts and one can create applications that run on the blockchain. This makes it a fantastic candidate for running multiple kinds of programs, and not only as a blockchain for cryptocurrency but for most utilities as well. Many utility companies have taken to building their utility tokens based on the ERC-20, that is the ethereum blockchain protocol.
Buterin himself said on Twitter “we should put resources toward the proper trustless serverless maximally Uniswap-like UX) ETH <-> BTC decentralized exchange. It’s embarrassing that we still can’t easily move between the two largest crypto ecosystems trustlessly.” Ethereum founder calls for Bitcoin Bridge in a twitter post.
Uniswap is supposed to be the solution with a trustless system. According to the website they define themselves as “a fully decentralized protocol for automated liquidity provision on Ethereum.” It basically means that it is a system which automatically allows people to lend and borrow money by staking crypto and swapping it out on the network. The crypto is placed on the system that automatically allows developers and lenders to access that crypto. This is what they mean when they say that there is automated liquidity. This would happen in an automated way so that people could get quick access to money and the marketplace would help expand without any sort of bottlenecks.
Buterin wants this to happen not just between ETH and ERC-20 or ETH and ETH but between Bitcoin and ethereum. This bridging is what he called for in his tweet. And he also stressed that rather than make it into a monolithic system, it would be better as a decentralized entity like a decentralized exchange or what is called a DEX. He also says we should also start building bridges between ethereum and other cryptosystems so that is not just between ethereum and Bitcoin but between ethereum and other crypto blockchains. He mentioned that he spoke to other people especially zcash. But admitted that it is harder than we think to implement something like this.
As a response to this message Komodo actually replied that this is possible with atomicsDEX, a mobile friendly atomic swap powered DEX. What happens here is that a peer to peer swaps from ETH or ERC-20 tokens directly to BTC or a number of different BTC-protocol coins.
While there is some sort of merit to this proposal it is hard to implement. But as pointed out by Buterin himself it is possible using a system very similar to the uniswap which allows for different tokens and liquidity and the reason why this is necessary is because it would allow multiple cryptocurrencies to play in the same market. Right now cryptocurrencies tend to be stuck at their own blockchains and anything that bridges the gap will be great.