Source: Cointelegraph Original: "{title}"

For a long time, Bitcoin bridging has been a technical and philosophical challenge, while other blockchain networks have relatively easily achieved interoperability.

This difficulty stems from Bitcoin's intentionally strict consensus rules and limited scripting language, which, despite the demand for decentralized bridging, makes cross-chain transactions cumbersome.

Over the years, the Bitcoin Virtual Machine (BitVM) protocol has been developed to address these limitations. However, these protocols come at a cost, including increased complexity and reduced decentralization.

In an exclusive interview with Cointelegraph, Sergio Lerner, a scientific expert at RootstockLabs, discussed the limitations of past approaches and the potential of Bitcoin (BTC) bridging in the broader decentralized finance (DeFi) space.

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While Bitcoin's scripting language is reliable and secure, it does not support the complex computations required to verify cross-chain transactions.

Lerner explained, "Bitcoin's language is not expressive enough to support [decentralized bridging]. This limitation has historically constrained efforts to establish fully decentralized and trust-minimized bridges."

Although the BitVM protocol addresses some of these challenges by introducing contentious computation to verify complex calculations on Bitcoin, Lerner pointed out that early versions of the BitVM protocol were inefficient:

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The BitVM protocol typically relies on trusted parties or external committees to monitor and verify disputes on the network. This introduces new security assumptions and reduces the level of decentralization in Bitcoin.

Lerner stated, "The limitation of every BitVM protocol is that it requires a contract on Bitcoin, and without a contract, they must mimic it with a committee that jointly signs a set of transactions."

This approach requires at least one committee member to act honestly to maintain the system's security.

"This limitation does not exist in two-party agreements based on BitVMX, such as payment channels," Lerner said. "This limitation only arises when the protocol must provide open services to other unknown parties."

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Despite these challenges, Lerner emphasized that BitVMX offers an alternative approach for Bitcoin bridging, enabling participation in a broader range of blockchain applications.

The scientific expert from RootstockLabs stated that BitVMX "is currently the cheapest and most resource-efficient contentious computation protocol for Bitcoin," making it a candidate for building network verification bridges.

However, Lerner also acknowledged the necessity for rigorous testing and cautious deployment to avoid risks, adding that any team rushing to deploy BitVM-based systems without proper testing "is playing with users' money."

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