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A Bitcoin (
$63,968.00 ) developer has proposed a new way to bring more expressive off-chain smart contracts to Bitcoin ( $63,968.00 ) (BTC) without needing a soft fork.
Announced in an Oct.9 white paper titled “BitVM: Compute Anything on Bitcoin ( $63,968.00 ) ” by ZeroSync’s project lead Robin Linus, BitVM enables Turing-complete Bitcoin ( $63,968.00 ) contracts without altering Bitcoin ( $63,968.00 ) ’s consensus rules.
“Any computable function can be verified on Bitcoin ( $63,968.00 ) ”https://t.co/Itf9UHos0C pic.twitter.com/CLQv49Ydsg
— яobin linus (@robin_linus) October 9, 2023
A Turing Complete system is one which can theoretically provide an answer to any computational problem.
The “logic” of Bitcoin ( $63,968.00 ) contracts is executed off-chain but is then verified on Bitcoin ( $63,968.00 ) — similar to Ethereum (
$1,865.11 ) ’s optimistic rollups.
BitVM’s architecture is based on fraud proofs and a challenge-response model where a “prover” can make claims and a “verifier” can perform a fraud-proof to punish the prover when false claims are made.
Linus explained that Bitcoin ( $63,968.00 ) , in its current form, is limited to basic operations, such as signatures, timelocks, and hashlocks — but that can now be broadened with BitVM, which Linus says can compute a host of interesting applications.
“Potential applications include games like Chess, Go, or Poker, and particularly, verification of validity proofs in Bitcoin ( $63,968.00 ) contracts.”
“Additionally, it might be possible to bridge BTC to foreign chains, build a prediction market, or emulate novel opcodes,” said Linus.
Linus said a limitation of the model is that it is limited to a two-party setting with a prover and a verifier and that a significant amount of off-chain computation and communication is needed to execute programs.
Linus said the next “milestone” is to fully implement the BitVM in addition to Tree++ — a high-level programming language to write and debug Bitcoin ( $63,968.00 ) contracts.
BitVM is enabled by the Taproot soft fork which took place in November 2021.
Linus cited Ethereum ( $1,865.11 ) research into optimistic rollups and a study on Merkle Trees in contributing to the eight-page white paper.
Bitcoin ( $63,968.00 ) ers respond to BitVM
Prominent Bitcoin ( $63,968.00 ) er Eric Wall posted on X (Twitter) that the concepts outlined in the BitVM white paper “check out” and is “cautiously excited” to see what real-world experiments stem from it.
Bitcoin ( $63,968.00 ) analyst Dylan LeClair is also impressed with BitVM’s white paper. But Adam Back, a Bitcoin ( $63,968.00 ) Core contributor suggested that people shouldn’t get too excited about the development just yet.
for people getting (over) excited, this is cool but effectively a generalization of a two-party game – it says right in the abstract – so it’s a bit like Greg Maxwell’s 2016 ZKP contingent payments implemented example https://t.co/OeHRsbFjud
— Adam Back (@adam3us) October 9, 2023
Related: BIP-300 biff: Debate reignites over years-old Bitcoin ( $63,968.00 ) Drivechain proposal
One builder in the blockchain space, “dotta,” noted that there is already a proof-of-concept on GitHub.
Another X user, Sam Parker, attempted to resolve a common fear among Bitcoin ( $63,968.00 ) maximalists by explaining that BitVM won’t force Bitcoin ( $63,968.00 ) ’s to be “locked” into these contracts.
“Finally, this is opt-in. If you don’t trust your coins being locked to some Turing complete contract (totally reasonable) then don’t lock them to a Turing complete smart contract. One of [the] beauties of the UTXO system is security sandboxing.”
Others, such as “psage” say BitVM adds to the list of things that will push Bitcoin ( $63,968.00 ) ’s price forward in the next bull market.
The bullish stuff around # Bitcoin ( $63,968.00 ) is snowballing, lots of them controversial, nevertheless a few off my finger tips:
– BitVM
– Ordinals
– Multiple Pres Candidates talking about it
– ETF
– Halving
– Privacy improvements
– Exponential Hash Rate increase
– Countries mining
….
— psage (@perspiringsage) October 9, 2023
Cointelegraph contacted Linus for comment but did not receive an immediate response.
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