Integrate all Bitcoin FORKs on ICP [BCH, DOGE, DASH, etc...]

Roadmap
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First of all, let me wish everyone here on the forum a Happy New Year!

This is an exciting discussion! Thanks for creating the forum topic on this issue.
Actually, this is something we have been thinking about in one form or another in our “General Integration” long-term R&D motion proposal. See Long Term R&D: General Integration (Proposal) - #4 by dieter.sommer, “Blockchain integrations.”

There are different options on how to integrate with other blockchains / cryptocurrencies:

On the two extremes ends of the spectrum we have the following:

  • Bridging
    • Pros
      • Easy to implement
      • Everybody in the community can implement it
    • Cons
      • Additional assumptions are required
      • Additional parties (bridges) are required
      • Less secure overall
  • Direct integration (like we are doing for Bitcoin)
    • Pros
      • No additional trust assumptions required
      • No additional parties required
      • Implementation might be able to reuse what has been done for Bitcoin (it’s still unclear to me how far that reusability goes as Bitcoin-like protocols do not use the exact same code as Bitcoin, but have forked off some time back and lack many improvements and fixes made for Bitcoin)
    • Cons
      • Harder to implement
      • Only the Foundation can implement it
      • Might make the generic implementation more complex by accounting for the specifics of the individual blockchains (to be discussed, how much difference there is in practice)

There is a middle ground between the two above (closer to the direct integration):

  • Relay-based integration (Relays external to the IC submit blocks of the to-be-integrated blockchain to a canister and receive transactions from it to send back to the other blockchain)
    • Pros
      • Easier to implement than a direct integration
      • Can be implement by anyone in the community
      • Uses threshold ECSDA for signing transactions on the integrated blockchain, thus it still features a strong trust model
    • Cons
      • Requires additional external parties (relays)
      • This requires additional assumptions on the availability of parties and their proper behaviour, but much less compared to a bridge

The creator of this topic suggests a direct integration, what do people think about the different options given here and their suitability for an integration with other Bitcoin-like blockchains?

By the way, any ERC-20 token available on Ethereum can be made available on the IC soon using the Terabethia bridge (see, e.g., Terabethia: Bridging Contracts & Assets Across Ethereum and the Internet Computer 🌉 | by Terabethia | Terabethia | Dec, 2021 | Medium) that will be released shortly by Fleek. The native integration with Ethereum the Foundation is planning will also bring ERC-20 tokens to the IC as a side effect, however, this will still take quite some time. Both have the drawback that not all cryptocurrencies of interest are available as wrapped ERC-20 tokens AFAIK and, if they are, they are bridged and not directly integrated. Also, transferring them to the IC and back to Ethereum will require Ethereum gas and thus incur some cost.

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