Centralized Bitcoin bridges expose the Ethereum ecosystem to systemic risk. Projects like REN and WBTC lock BTC in insecure multisig setups and raise concerns of total value collapse.
Strudel is the first one-way, trustless bridge linking Bitcoin to Ethereum. vBTC, the resulting asset, trades off counterparty risk for market risk, bringing more diversity to the tokenized-BTC landscape. In the long term Strudel is about using the forces of crypto-economics to challenge the status quo of blockchain and free BTC from the grip of Wall Street.