A Bitcoin developer has proposed a new way to bring more expressive off-chain smart contracts to Bitcoin (BTC)\u00a0without needing a soft fork.<\/p>\n
Announced in an Oct.9 white paper titled \u201cBitVM: Compute Anything on Bitcoin\u201d by ZeroSync\u2019s project lead Robin Linus, BitVM enables Turing-complete Bitcoin contracts without altering Bitcoin\u2019s consensus rules.<\/p>\n
A Turing Complete system is one which can theoretically provide an answer to any computational problem.<\/p>\n
With BitVM, the \u201clogic\u201d of Bitcoin contracts would be executed off-chain but verification would be made on Bitcoin \u2014 similar to Ethereum\u2019s optimistic rollups.<\/p>\n
BitVM\u2019s architecture is based on fraud proofs and a challenge-response model where a \u201cprover\u201d can make claims and a \u201cverifier\u201d can perform a fraud-proof to punish the prover when false claims are made.<\/p>\n
Linus explained that Bitcoin, in its current form, is limited to basic operations, such as signatures, timelocks, and hashlocks \u2014 but that can now be broadened with BitVM, which Linus says can compute a host of interesting applications.<\/p>\n
\u201cPotential applications include games like Chess, Go, or Poker, and particularly, verification of validity proofs in Bitcoin contracts.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\u201cAdditionally, it might be possible to bridge BTC to foreign chains, build a prediction market, or emulate novel opcodes,\u201d said Linus.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Linus said the next \u201cmilestone\u201d is to fully implement the BitVM in addition to Tree++ \u2014 a high-level programming language to write and debug Bitcoin contracts.<\/p>\n
BitVM is enabled by the Taproot soft fork which took place in November 2021.<\/p>\n
Linus cited Ethereum research into optimistic rollups and a study on Merkle Trees in contributing to the eight-page white paper.<\/p>\n
Bitcoiners respond to BitVM<\/h3>\n
Prominent Bitcoiner Eric Wall posted on X (Twitter) that the concepts outlined in the BitVM white paper \u201ccheck out\u201d and is \u201ccautiously excited\u201d to see what real-world experiments stem from it.<\/p>\n
Bitcoin analyst Dylan LeClair is also impressed with BitVM\u2019s white paper. But Adam Back, a Bitcoin Core contributor suggested that people shouldn\u2019t get too excited about the development just yet.<\/p>\n
Related: <\/em><\/strong>BIP-300 biff: Debate reignites over years-old Bitcoin Drivechain proposal<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n
One builder in the blockchain space, \u201cdotta,\u201d noted that there is already a proof-of-concept on GitHub.<\/p>\n
Another X user, Sam Parker, attempted to resolve a common fear among Bitcoin maximalists by explaining that BitVM won\u2019t force Bitcoin\u2019s to be \u201clocked\u201d into these contracts. <\/p>\n
\u201cFinally, this is opt-in. If you don\u2019t trust your coins being locked to some Turing complete contract (totally reasonable) then don\u2019t lock them to a Turing complete smart contract. One of [the] beauties of the UTXO system is security sandboxing.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Others, such as \u201cpsage\u201d say BitVM adds to the list of things that will push Bitcoin\u2019s price forward in the next bull market.<\/p>\n
Cointelegraph contacted Linus for comment but did not receive an immediate response.<\/p>\n