Meme or Not a Meme: Cats

Considering that cats have essentially ruled the internet for the past two decades, is it really any surprise that cat memes have finally taken over the Bitcoin space as well over the past few weeks? Cats are the most prevalent meme on the internet, so it’s not the least bit shocking that Taproot Wizards resorted to an enhanced cat while trolling Luke about his “dietary choices.”

But the question must be asked. Do meme campaigns really want to be the way we decide and discuss consensus changes to a protocol as valuable as Bitcoin? I’ve seen a lot of music videos going on at OP_CAT, campaigns to go out into the world and “educate” people, and a whole “quest” system released by Taproot Wizards… But the reality is, most of the content I see is. What I saw was incredibly superficial.

Rijndael, the “Artificer” at Taproot Wizards and one of the few, if not the only, people to actually build use case examples using OP_CAT, has created a demo of an OP_CAT based covenant script.

This script directs you to send a specific amount of Bitcoin to a specific address, and there is no other way to spend these coins other than in transactions that meet the exact conditions agreed upon. Take a look at the size of this script.

OP_TOALTSTACK OP_CAT OP_CAT OP_CAT OP_CAT de890a8209d796493ee7bac9a58b62fbced10ccb7311e24f26c461c079ead08c OP_SWAP OP_CAT OP_CAT OP_CAT OP_CAT OP_CAT OP_CAT OP_CAT OP_CAT OP_CAT 5461705369676861 7368 OP_SHA256 OP_DUP OP_ROT OP_CAT OP_CAT OP_SHA256 424950303334302f6368616c6c656e6765 OP_SHA256 OP_DUP OP_ROT 79be667ef9dcbbac55a06295ce870b07029bfcdb2dce28d9 59f2815b16f81798 OP_DUP OP_DUP OP_TOALTSTACK 2 OP_ROLL OP_CAT OP_CAT OP_CAT OP_CAT OP_SHA256 OP_FROMALTSTACK OP_SWAP OP_CAT OP_FROMALTSTACK OP_DUP 1 OP_CAT OP_ROT OP_EQUALVERIFY 2 OP_CAT 79be667ef9dcbbac55a06295ce 870b07029bfcdb2dce28d959f2815b16f81798 OP_CHECKSIG

This is what you need to emulate CHECKTEMPLATEVERIFY. The corresponding script using CTV is:

CTV.

What is the value of something like OP_CAT when mimicking the case of a basic template contract like this (one that requires spending transactions to meet certain predefined conditions)? We know exactly how to handle schemes that apply templates to transactions that consume outputs locked to the template commitment, and we have several proposals for this. CTV, TXHASH, OP_TX, and APO can also emulate these schemes by padding the transaction’s lock output with a signature at the cost of an additional 64 bytes.

What is the actual use of OP_CAT in “experiments” to meet the needs of a class of use cases that are mature enough that there are at least four covenant proposals capable of handling those use cases with very little data cost? “Oh, we want to experiment with CAT because it’s flexible!” Do you really want to do 30 OP calls to do something that can be done all at once? Is this actually a reason to enact consensus changes to Bitcoin? That logic is beyond absurd.

downplaying the risk

In a vacuum, OP_CAT is sold as “simply concatenating two strings” and many memes try to frame it as “how could it be dangerous?” This is a very disingenuous narrative surrounding the proposal, and completely ignores how it will interact with other existing and future aspects of the script.

CSFS + CAT in particular opens up a huge amount of possibilities in terms of what you can do with Bitcoin Script, but not all of them are necessarily positive. CSFS allows you to verify signatures on arbitrary pieces of data while a script is running, while CAT allows you to “glue” different pieces of data together in a stack. These two things exorbitant It’s a design space for what you can do with Bitcoin.

One specific example is the possibility of enforcing the amounts of certain inputs and outputs in a transaction, or relationships between different amounts. CAT allows you to build transaction hashes from individual parts of the stack, while CSFS allows you to verify the signature against the lock script’s public key against any part of that transaction as it is built. This could ultimately enable the creation of open UTXOs that anyone can spend, as long as the spending transaction meets certain criteria, such as a certain amount of coins being sent to a certain address. Combine this with the reality of OP_RETURN based assets and you start to enter the realm of decentralized exchanges (DEXs).

Some of the worst incentive distortion problems that have come to fruition on other blockchains ultimately stem from the creation of DEXs on those chains. Having non-interactive exchange capabilities directly on the blockchain is one of the worst forms of MEV. This is especially true when miners are likely to lock in their profits across multiple transactions in the scope of a single block, rather than actually carrying them around. There is a risk of taking a position over several blocks before closing the position and realizing profits.

One of the movements behind Taproot Wizards is to “bring innovation back.” In other words, the lessons learned in the land of shitcoins are coming back to Bitcoin. Now, I categorically reject the notion that anything useful has been developed in any other coin over the past decade other than the basic concept of zero-knowledge proofs, but this increasingly loud mantra is a huge part of what makes up its mechanics, even if you disagree with my view: It’s the same. There are lessons to be learned about what not to do and what to do.

DEX is one of the things you should not do. There is nothing that has caused confusion, volatility in fee dynamics (which will need to be mitigated over time for the sustainability of the second layer), and incentive confusion related to the underlying consensus layer and degree of centralization of these protocols. The idea that we should rush to bring these types of problems to Bitcoin or make them worse by introducing a way to trustlessly embed Bitcoin assets in a more dynamic and flexible way is frankly crazy. This speaks to the millions of people who have watched what happened in other blockchains over the past five years or so and learned nothing.

forever chained to the cat’s shackles

Looking at the dynamic relationship between CSFS + CAT above, we can see that Reardencode’s recent LNHANCE proposal (CTV + CSFS + internal key) actually provides a path to providing eltoo for Lightning in a more blockspace efficient way than using APO. It’s worth pointing out. Building on these claims and proof of concept, if Lightning developers who want LN symmetry to simplify Lightning channel management and implementation maintenance win, we’ll have CSFS in the process. If OP_CAT was previously enabled, there is no way to avoid the type of harmful side effects that result from combining the two proposals.

This will apply to all future soft fork proposals once OP_CAT is enabled. No matter what new proposals come out in the future, it will be impossible to escape whatever side effects or use cases are made possible by combining OP_CAT. OP_CAT itself is clunky, inefficient, and pointless. But when combined with other OPs it starts to become incredibly flexible and powerful. This will be a dynamic we can never escape from, and features that may be so necessary in the future for Bitcoin’s scalability may inevitably come with enormous downsides and risks simply because of the existence of OP_CAT.

Is this a reality we want to enter simply because of a meme campaign? Is it because people want to tinker with very inefficient means of getting things done instead of looking at suggestions that are much more efficient and purpose-built? I would say no.

I know meme campaigns can be fun. They create a sense of community and involvement. This is an inherent and unavoidable part of the Internet and the many cultures that exist on it. But this is not how we determine Bitcoin’s development path. They can be funny, or they can be vicious and barbaric in getting straight to the heart of the problem that people are dancing around or vaguely arguing about. But in many ways they are terrible at capturing nuance and complexity.

Attempting to drive consensus on a network like Bitcoin based purely on the value of memes rather than rational consideration of proposals and their implications would be disastrous. The conservatism and caution of Bitcoin development has kept Bitcoin at the forefront of this space while shitcoins have come and gone, and it has exploded as a result of its carefree development attitude by night. As much as Bitcoin needs to break out of its current rut of stagnation and lack of progress, relying on uncritical memes and music videos is not the way to do it. This risks destroying what makes Bitcoin valuable: its solid, conservative foundation.