Make things easier for contracts, CTVs and developers

Builder: Stu

Language: Rust

Contribution: CTV Prototype, Char Network

Work (s/ed) at:zbd

Before Bitcoin, Stu worked as a Windows system administrator and supported IT. His routine consisted of long, boring days of sitting in a chair engaged in monotonous maintenance tasks, reconfiguring the system, resetting passwords for forgotten users.

It was a job that caused problems requiring you to actually get your attention in a meaningful way.

Stu spent most of his days just browsing Reddit threads during his massive downtime. However, this ultimately turned out to be not such a bad scenario. This was how STU discovered he was drawn into the Bitcoin space around 2017.

During that period, Stu was sucked into the first coin product (ICO) and Altcoin Frenzy to become a lot of Bitcoin, or soon to become Bitcoin. And like many Bitcoiners back then, he was financially burned by some bad investments in random, unknown projects that he probably shouldn’t have invested in in the first place.

Inevitably, bitcoin’s gravity pulled him down from the proverbed rabbit hole.

A few years after learning more about Bitcoin, Stu hit a period of frenzy, quitting his job at the peak of the bull market in 2021, looking for opportunities to work in the Bitcoin field. By then, programming language rust was widely used in various Bitcoin projects and libraries, so Stu began learning to contribute to Bitcoin.

Towards the end of 2022, he searched for work in the space ended when he was hired by Michael Tildwell to work for ZBD, a company that uses the Lightning network to integrate Bitcoin payments into video games.

I work for ZBD

Stu worked on DevOps at ZBD, but at his free time he continued to work on the prototype Rust project.

“Most of my side projects are related to things that I was interested in at the time. I was working for ZBD, so I started making games that allow me to use Bitcoin,” Stu told Bitcoin Magazine.

First, he built Rain.run, a multiplayer web game. This is based on players who are familiar with building applications that need to talk to each other over the network and collect Lightning Bolts for rewards in Satosh. He then built a simple Connect4 game played with the NOSTR protocol.

“(This) was a great way to learn how Nostr works,” Stu said.

“I joined Austin’s BTC++ in 2024. This was the scripted version.” The four-day meeting was the most dense forum for discussion about Bitcoin script improvements and contracts last year or so.

“At that time, it seemed like some kind of consensus had developed due to the Bitcoin contract,” recalls Stu.

“This really made me interested in how the Bitcoin script worked and led me to experimenting with Taproot and Bitcoin scripts…” he added.

“I really didn’t end up with much, but it was a great way to learn how the script works.”

TabConf, Payment Pool, CTV

In 2024, STU attended TabConf, another developer-centric conference held annually in Atlanta, Georgia. The conversation in Atlanta revolved heavily around contracts.

Like all developer-focused meetings, TabConf fitted a hackathon. Stu chose to build the project using a modest logging agreement (DLC). This allowed users to bet on the outcome of the chess match. For STU, it has become very clear that building software around pre-signing a large number of transactions introduces a lot of complexity to developers.

Discussing this issue, he states: “The answer to this question seemed to be CheckTemplateVerify (CTV). I wanted to know more about the contract, so CTV seemed like a good place to start, so I started integrating CTV into the DLC Chess Project.

Stu has created a proof-of-concept prototype for the payment pool using CTV. A payment pool is a very basic layer 2 system where two or more groups share one unused Bitcoin output.

“One way to scale Bitcoin for everyone to use without using centralized third parties is for users to share UTXO,” he said when asked why he chose to work on a proof of concept for a payment pool. “Payment pools are a great way to do this, especially along with other layer 2 solutions like Lightning and Ark.”

contract

The contract has become a controversial issue with debate about where to move Bitcoin forward. All developers have a personal opinion about them, and STU is no exception.

“I think exchanging only pre-signed transactions using contracts is an incredible improvement that will help developers build faster and more securely,” he said. “It removes a lot of interactivity and friction for users, so users will have less need to be online or coordinate with other stakeholders. This could significantly improve the user experience.”

I asked him if this led him to use CTV to build proof of concept and prototypes, as opposed to other contract proposals.

“I was drawn to CTV because it was very easy to implement in the application I wanted to build. Once I built a payment pool with CTV, I was planning on doing the same thing for all my contract proposals. I came up with a way to get exactly the same functionality as my cat, but it took me a very long time to get the job and added more code.

“I’m sure there’s a consensus among Protocol developers that there’s no risk of Bitcoin if you enable CTV…” he said. “…So the argument is that users don’t want that. But users are already using applications and protocols such as lightning bolts and multi-sig vaults that are improved by CTV.

He said this when asked about the current controversial nature of the debate on contracts and the next soft fork, and how it could improve the atmosphere.

“Everything would be good because someone would have to have Saylor tweet a sandwich emoji.”

“But seriously, I don’t know. Events where people can face-to-face discussions may be more useful. It doesn’t seem like a technical reason why we’re not making any progress.

“I think part of the hesitation is around bringing about making a change in Bitcoin. The reason why it’s so difficult to change is the surprising property of Bitcoin, but it doesn’t need to be too extended to soft forks. It causes a lot of stress on certain Bitcoin developers, especially Bitcoin core maintainers. Change,” he said.

future

Stu recently joined the Bitcoin Open Source Software (Boss) program by ChainCode Labs, designed as a way for new developers to reduce teeth and develop a deeper understanding and experience in building Bitcoin.

Going forward, STU will contribute to Char Network, a radar effort to build a new Bitcoin staking platform led by Jeremy Rubin, the developer who designed and proposed CTV. He plans to continue working on his personal side projects and also contribute to open source projects, with the ultimate goal of starting to contribute to Bitcoin Core itself.

Stu was saying this about Bitcoiner’s priorities becoming the future.

“Our number one focus should be on improving self-custody. It’s really awful for now and I think more and more bitcoiners need to acknowledge it in general.