Author: Greg Sanders 2022-08-19 17:20:41
Published on: 2022-08-19T17:20:41+00:00
James O'Beirne, a Bitcoin developer, recently discussed the potential uses of OP_CHECKTEMPLATEVERIFY (CTV) in a post to the bitcoin-dev mailing list. One of the use cases he mentioned is congestion control, particularly in the context of Layer 2 protocols like payment channels and vaults. These protocols require timely settlement to prevent protocol abuse, but unexpected conditions could cause mempools to fill up, leading to protocol failures due to lack of block space. CTV can be used to compress settlement commitments and get them on-chain, allowing for later unpacking of CTV outputs into the contract's true end state. CTV-based congestion control could also help smooth fees, creating a less spiky incentive to mine, which would be beneficial under a no-block-subsidy regime. Another potential use case for CTV that James mentioned is atomic mining pool payouts. Direct-from-coinbase payouts are desirable to avoid trust in pools, but the size of the coinbase outputs limits the number of participants in the pool. If the payout was instead a single OP_CTV output, an arbitrary number of participants could be paid out "atomically" within a single coinbase. James notes that CTV is a simple concept and implementation likely to yield potential applications going forward. "Settlement compression" seems like a useful thing, especially in light of a possible increase in L2 usage, and CTV seems like the simplest means to enable it. Additionally, an analogue for this pattern going the other direction is possible, e.g. non-interactive channel openings.
Updated on: 2023-06-15T23:47:06.631020+00:00