Hi, steemians,
It is a great pleasure to be back in yet another season of the engagement challenge. I must confess I missed the educative lecture and assignment given in this noble community. As usual, the crypto academy community takes active participation in all the engagement challenges for all seasons and the season is not an exception.

The first week of this very season presents us with a very unique contest titled The blockchain bridge. As I have earlier stated, the assignment in this very community helps us to learn via vest research always. Today I'm going to present my finding about the topic under consideration by answering the questions below. Let's get started.

Before I explain my understanding of the word blockchain bridge, I will like us to have a recap of what blockchain is all about. Blockchain technology came into the limelight in the year 2009 with the creation of Bitcoin by Satoshi Nakamoto.

This technology was used alongside decentralized finances (DeFi) because Bitcoin happens to be some sort of finance as well. Due to the security and reliability of this technology I.e the blockchain technology in the DeFi sector, every other sector started adopting it as well.

With many sectors adopting the use of blockchain in their areas, the need for all the blockchains in different sectors to communicate with each other also increased. So different ways to improve the interoperability between these blockchains were also sorted and that is what gave birth to what we call today a blockchain bridge.

Blockchain bridge in simpler terms refers to a protocol that helps two different blockchains to interact with each other effectively without any issues at all. This means that for effective communication to be carried out among blockchains, they need a bridge.

An example is can be seen between the Bitcoin blockchain and the Ethereum blockchain where you can transfer an ETH token directly to a bitcoin blockchain without having to pass through the process of converting the asset to the native token of the blockchain you are sending it to in this case bitcoin.

Based on the illustration above, you will agree with me that what necessitated bridges in the blockchain is interoperability. Effective communication without any form of delay between blockchains is the very reason why we are having the blockchain bridge today.

As we have seen above, there are lots of factors which brought about the blockchain bridge and these factors have helped in building the benefits of the blockchain bridge for users. We will be discussing a few of them below.

One of the major benefits of the blockchain bridge even as I have stated above is interoperability I.e the ability of the blockchain to communicate effectively. With this, blockchains can share data and also carry out transactions without any form of delay. So in essence, they communicate and understand each other.

As I have also stated above, with the help of blockchain bridge, you can make transfers from one blockchain to another without necessarily converting the token to the native token of the blockchain you want to transfer to.

This is another important benefit of the blockchain bridge because blockchains are now improved to accommodate as many tokens as possible as well as many transactions at a time. Since blockchains are aware of the bridge, they make room for more transactions and more users.

To be able to effectively transfer an asset from one blockchain to another for example say Bitcoin to Ethereum, you need to have the token wrapped. For example, if I want to send my BTC to an ethereum blockchain, what I will get is the wBTC token in the ethereum blockchain which is equivalent to my BTC in my BTC blockchain.

Wrapping the token serves as a cover to protect the passage of the asset to a new blockchain since I'm not transferring the native token of the asset to the blockchain. So, wrapping the token implies locking it such that it can be passed from one blockchain to another.

The types of blockchain bridges by category include the trusted and the trustless blockchain bridges. I will be explaining each of them briefly below.

The trusted or centralized blockchain bridge is a type of blockchain bridge that works alongside a third party to get its operation done. As the name suggested trusted or centralized, means that the bridge is built on trust because an individual or group are responsible to oversee the affairs hence the asset is managed by these persons based on trust.

The trustless or decentralized blockchain bridge is a type of blockchain bridge that uses smart contracts for its operations. Here a program has already been designed to oversee the transactions in this type of bridge hence no third party is involved.

There are many blockchain bridges today because of the presence of many crypto assets. One of the most used bridges today is the Binance bridge. Binance is the world's largest exchange platform and for that reason it whole a lot of tokens hence this bridge was created to help its customers and those in the outside world to have pleasant transactions.

On the binance smart chain, you can wrap an ERC-20 token into BEP-20 provided you have the equivalent needed for the asset under consideration. Once you have BEP-20, you can use it in the binance smart chain and have it transferred to the desired blockchain.

Yes, there are limitations to the blockchain bridges because anything that has an advantage also has a disadvantage. I will be listing and discussing a few of the disadvantages I have spotted in my little research on the topic under consideration.

The first issue I want to bring out here is the trust or centralized blockchain bridge issues. We are all aware that a third party oversee this transaction hence it means your asset is been controlled by a third party which can be lost since you don't completely have access to the asset.

In the case of a trustless or decentralized blockchain bridge, a smart contract handles the whole affairs here and this means that if such a system is hacked, all the assets of people locked in this type of bridge will be completely stolen.

Giving access to users of a blockchain to other users of another blockchain can cause security traits since they are allowed to transfer and also access the app in the new blockchain. If for any reason the initial blockchain was not safe enough, their working with the new blockchain will also make it not safe.

There is no iota of doubt about the future that the blockchain bridge has presented to us all. As we have seen already, there is currently interoperability between different blockchains and that has made the blockchain industries grow even stronger. With the current initiative, many more sectors will troop into the use of blockchain because it holds the answers to their worries.

The use of blockchain technology in different phases of life is on the increase on daily basis. This is the reason why the blockchain bridge came to the limelight to enable interoperability among the different blockchains. Transactions today can be done by converting the token to the native token of the new blockchain. I have also stated that we have a trusted and trustless blockchain bridge where they use third-party and smart contracts respectively.