The transfer comes with a $1 million fund for researchers.
StarkWare, the group that pioneered zero-knowledge-based rollups in 2018 and has been instrumental to scaling Ethereum via its Layer 2 Starknet, has unveiled an bold plan to now scale Bitcoin.
“We want to seize the moment,” StarkWare’s Co-founder and CEO Eli Ben-Sasson informed The Defiant. “In the time since the Taproot upgrade, research has helped us to appreciate that it has unlocked pathways to new possibilities over BTC.”
Taproot, which was carried out November 2021, was the newest and largest of Bitcoin’s upgrades. It seeks to spice up sensible contracts and privateness to Layer 1 transactions, a much-needed function for the community. However in line with a dashboard by Bitcoin core contributor Luke Sprint Jr., barely 12% of Bitcoin nodes are working an upgraded Taproot model of the software program.
Nonetheless, Ben-Sasson is gearing to benefit from the newest enchancment.
The group has allotted a $1 million fund for analysis and improvement to make StarkWare’s Bitcoin scaling plan attainable. Funds will go to researchers particularly devoted to gaining a deeper understanding of OP_CAT, a Satoshi-era script of Bitcoin that has now resurfaced.
A Controversial Revival
OP_CAT, quick for “Operation Concatenate,” is an opcode that was initially proposed by Bitcoin’s creator, Satoshi Nakamoto. The opcode permits for the mixture of two items of knowledge right into a single piece of knowledge in the course of the execution of a Bitcoin transaction.
Basically, OP_CAT permits particular options that may restrict or increase how bitcoin might be transacted sooner or later. Use-cases embrace safe vaults that may permit reversible transactions, automated recurring funds, or time-locked transfers for inheritance schemes.
However Satoshi Nakamoto truly eliminated OP_CAT in 2011, citing considerations that it will expose the community to safety points, resembling denial-of-service (DoS) assaults if used at the side of different comparable scripts.
Based on Ben-Sasson, the likelihood of OP_CAT being adopted is excessive, which locations StarkWare’s plan in an thrilling place. “It will retain all Bitcoin values unchanged,” he defined, “while providing a bare bones framework that is just enough to bring STARK scaling to Bitcoin.
Reactivating OP_CAT has its defenders along with detractors.
Udi Wertheimer, well-known Bitcoin troll and Co-founder of the Taproot Wizards, has been touting the script since it was introduced back in October 2022. He has claimed that OP_CAT will allow scaling without changing the core fundamentals of Bitcoin–a sentiment shared by Ben-Sasson.
Others aren’t so sure about that.
Detractors Call It An Attack
Robin Linus, the creator of BitVM, a proposed system that allows complex computations and smart contracts to be executed on the Bitcoin network, previously said that OP_CAT “fundamentally changes Bitcoin’s nature, introducing a new attack surface that nobody fully comprehends.”
Notably, Ben-Sasson informed The Defiant that one of many groups they have been working with to get StarkWare’s bold plan off the bottom is BitVM.
Others agree with Linus, though in barely totally different trend.
As Matt Corrallo, a Bitcoin core contributor defined in an April 16 put up titled “Stop Calling It MEV,” methods which have arbitrarily expressible sensible contracts are prone to have the potential for superior MEV extraction much like what we see on Ethereum at the moment.
Implementing OP_CAT opens the door to that risk.
Corrallo didn’t explicitly state he was towards OP_CAT, however his factors have been taken by bitcoiners which might be towards the improve. Others additionally known as out the shortcoming of OP_CAT defenders to voice dangers that include reviving and reimplementing the script.
The pseudonymous technical editor for Bitcoin Journal Shinobi wrote on X on March 14 that the “If we don’t know the limits of what this can do or the potential effects it could have, adding it into Bitcoin sounds like a horrible idea, imo.”
An Formidable Plan
That mentioned, Ben-Sasson’s group isn’t shying away from its plan. He additionally outlined his basic imaginative and prescient early this Tuesday morning in a video put up.
StarkWare is the group behind StarkNet, one of many prime scaling options for Ethereum which at the moment holds $294 million in Whole Worth Locked (TVL), in line with DeFiLlama. The group is now intent on taking that success, and replicating it on Bitcoin.
To scale Ethereum–and now hopefully Bitcoin–StarkWare makes use of zero-knowledge rollups. These use the minimal quantity of data wanted to confirm a transaction, decreasing the info load on the community.
Rollups have been largely touted by the groups creating them as the reply to scaling woes suffered by blockchains. They don’t commerce off safety, however quite inherit the protections of Layer 1s, whereas permitting for sooner and extra transactions to occur off chain.
These might be the fitting reply for the Bitcoin ecosystem, well-known for its gradual transaction throughput and excessive charges when congested. Nonetheless, the answer delivered right here with OP_CAT is a contentious choice, and one that may get pushback from the general Bitcoin neighborhood.
As OP_CAT continues to get examined on Bitcoin’s testnet–it was launched in early April 2024–the duty at hand will likely be to see if the general neighborhood is up for reviving its ten traces of code.
