Is this the beginning of the end of Ethereum? That’s the question posed in a Bitcoin subreddit devoted to new information and discussion about Bitcoin and its ecosystem.

The comment comes after the announcement by Counterparty that it is porting the Ethereum Virtual Machine to the Bitcoin Blockchain.

That will facilitate all of the functionality of Ethereum on Bitcoin except for some features like the block times.

Solidity

Smart contracts executed via Counterparty's port of the EVM use the exact same language as Ethereum smart contracts, a language known as Solidity whose syntax is similar to that of JavaScript.
Solidity is designed to compile to code for the EVM and easy to create contracts for use in a number of applications such as programmatic escrow services, identity systems, social networks, consensus building tools for voting, crowdfunding, blind auctions, multi-signature wallets and more.

Solidity has a specialized web IDE that provides shell access to a complete Ethereum environment.
It works on Counterparty’s free and open platform that uses the Bitcoin network to create a robust and secure marketplace directly on the Bitcoin blockchain, extending Bitcoin’s functionality from a peer-to-peer payment network into a full fledged peer-to-peer financial platform.

Questions remain

But can a user create a DAO with Counterparty? - another forum member asked. What if a user still argues that Bitcoin was not made for smart contracts? Didn’t Counterparty declare Ethereum dead two years ago?

Some say the success of Counterparty will increase the survival chance of Bitcoin against Ethereum and other altcoins. How valuable will the EVM be to the network, and how will it secure the value of XCP to be used in this context?

Is there a use case for Counterparty at all once Rootstock is up and running? XCP was fully premined (despite the burning) and so there is no real value pegging...How true is that?

Some, if not all, of these questions will be answered when the EVM is implemented on the Blockchain technology within a month following additional testing.