BTC Relay Bridges BTC With Ethereum, Allowing BTC Verification For Smart Contracts

ConsenSys, a blockchain technology company, and Ethereum have developed BTC Relay, an Ethereum contract that allows Ethereum users to pay with bitcoin. Servicing as a bridge between Ethereum and bitcoin, BTC Relay is a tool for developers who want to verify bitcoin transactions for Ethereum and smart contract applications.
Community members, called Relayers, provide BTC Relay with new bitcoin block headers generated by bitcoin miners. Ethereum app developers can make API calls to BTC Relay from smart contracts to verify bitcoin network activities.
Anyone can join the Ethereum network and become a Relayer. There is no hardware or electricity cost.
How It Works
BTC Relay uses the block headers to build a small version of the bitcoin blockchain. The method is also used by Bitcoin Simplified Payment Verification (SPV), a scheme described in section 8 of the original bitcoin white paper.

This post was published at Crypto Coins News on 21/08/2016.