Builder: Stu
Language(s): Rust
Contributes To: CTV Prototypes, Char Community
Work(s/ed) At: ZBD
Earlier than Bitcoin, Stu spent his days working as a Home windows System Administrator and in IT Assist. His routine consisted of lengthy boring days of sitting in a chair partaking in monotonous upkeep work, reconfiguring methods, and resetting passwords for customers who’d forgotten them.
It was the sort of job the place an issue occurring that really requires you to have interaction your consideration in a significant means is so uncommon an prevalence that you simply wind up sitting round hoping for one thing like that to occur more often than not.
Stu spent most days simply searching via Reddit threads throughout his copious quantities of downtime. However this turned out to not be such a foul state of affairs in the long run, as this was how Stu discovered himself pulled into the Bitcoin area round 2017.
Like many Bitcoiners, or relatively soon-to-be Bitcoiners, again in that interval, Stu bought sucked into the Preliminary Coin Providing (ICO) and altcoin frenzy of the time. Additionally, like many Bitcoiners round that point, he wound up getting burned financially by some unhealthy investments in random unknown tasks through which he most likely shouldn’t have invested within the first place.
Inevitably the gravity of Bitcoin pulled him down the proverbial rabbit gap.
After a number of years of studying extra deeply about Bitcoin, Stu hit a interval of frenzy and give up his job on the peak of the 2021 bull market to search for alternatives to work within the Bitcoin area. By that point the programming language Rust had change into broadly utilized in completely different Bitcoin tasks and libraries, so Stu started studying it in order that he may contribute to Bitcoin.
In direction of the tip of 2022, his seek for a job within the area ended when he was employed by Michael Tildwell to work at ZBD, an organization that integrates bitcoin funds into videogames utilizing the Lightning Community.
Working At ZBD
Stu labored DevOps at ZBD, however in his free time he stored working at prototype Rust tasks.
“Most of my facet tasks are associated to what I used to be involved in on the time, as I used to be working at ZBD I began making video games that might use bitcoin,” Stu informed Bitcoin Journal.
To start out, he constructed a multiplayer net sport, rain.run, primarily based round gamers gathering lightning bolts for rewards in satoshis, to get extra acquainted with constructing functions which have to speak to one another over a community. Afterwards he constructed a easy connect4 sport performed over the Nostr protocol.
“[This] was a good way to learn the way Nostr labored,” mentioned Stu.
“I attended btc++ in Austin in 2024, which was the Script version.” The 4 day convention was essentially the most dense discussion board for dialogue round Bitcoin script enhancements and covenants within the final 12 months or so.
“There gave the impression to be, on the time, some sort of consensus creating for covenants on Bitcoin,” recalled Stu.
“This bought me actually involved in how Bitcoin script labored and [led] me to experimenting with Taproot and Bitcoin scripts…” he added.
“I didn’t actually find yourself with a lot but it surely was a good way to learn the way scripts labored.”
TABConf, Fee Swimming pools, and CTV
In 2024, Stu attended TABConf, one other developer-focused convention, which is held yearly in Atlanta, Georgia. The conversations in Atlanta additionally revolved closely round covenants.
Like all developer-focused conferences, TABConf placed on a hackathon. Stu selected to construct a venture utilizing Discreet Log Contracts (DLCs), which enabled customers to guess on the end result of chess matches. It grew to become very apparent to Stu that constructing software program round pre-signing giant numbers of transactions launched plenty of complexity for builders.
Discussing this situation, he mentioned: “The reply to this drawback gave the impression to be CHECKTEMPLATEVERIFY (CTV). As I needed to study extra about covenants, CTV appeared like an excellent place to start out, so I began integrating CTV into my DLC chess venture. I couldn’t imagine how easy it made all the pieces…”
Stu went on to construct a proof-of-concept prototype of a Fee Pool utilizing CTV. Fee swimming pools are a really fundamental layer 2 system the place teams of bigger than two share management over a single unspent bitcoin output.
“A technique we are able to scale bitcoin for use by everybody, with out utilizing centralized third events, is for customers to share UTXO’s,” he mentioned when requested why he selected to work on a proof-of-concept for a cost pool. “Fee swimming pools are a good way to do that, particularly alongside different layer 2 options akin to Lightning or Ark.”
Covenants
Covenants have change into a contentious situation within the dialogue about the place to take Bitcoin going ahead. Each developer has their private opinion on them, and Stu is not any exception.
“I believe utilizing covenants to interchange pre-signed transactions alone is a tremendous enchancment for builders to construct sooner and safer,” he mentioned. “It removes plenty of interactivity and friction for customers, so there’s much less want for them to be on-line or coordinate with different events, which may enhance the person expertise by an incredible deal.”
I requested him if that is what drew him to constructing proof-of-concepts and prototypes utilizing CTV versus different covenant proposals.
“I used to be drawn to CTV as a result of it was so easy to implement within the functions I needed to construct. As soon as I constructed the cost pool with CTV, I used to be planning on doing the identical for all covenant proposals. I found out the best way to get the very same performance with CAT, but it surely simply took a really very long time to get working, and added far more code. The Bitcoin script was like 50 strains of code, in comparison with CTV with like 3 strains.”
“I’m fairly positive there’s consensus between protocol builders that there isn’t any danger to Bitcoin if we enabled CTV…” he mentioned. “…so the argument now appears to be that the customers don’t need it. However the customers are already utilizing functions and protocols akin to Lightning and multisig vaults that will be improved by CTV. So…I believe it needs to be the precedence for the subsequent delicate fork…”
When requested concerning the present contentious nature of the dialogue round covenants and the subsequent delicate fork, and the way the ambiance may very well be improved, he had this to say:
“Somebody must get Saylor to tweet a sandwich emoji and all the pieces can be good.”
“However critically, I don’t actually know. Perhaps extra in individual occasions the place individuals can talk about head to head would assist. It doesn’t seem to be a lot of a technical cause that we aren’t making progress, extra of a political one,” he went on to say in a extra critical tone.
“I believe a few of the hesitance is extra round making any change in any respect to Bitcoin. The rationale it’s so arduous to vary is a tremendous property of Bitcoin, but it surely doesn’t have to increase to delicate forks fairly a lot. It causes plenty of stress for sure Bitcoin builders, particularly Bitcoin Core maintainers. Everyone seems to be ready on their opinion on the subsequent fork, which appears to make them hesitant on becoming a member of within the dialog in any respect, which makes it arduous to get consensus on any new change,” he mentioned.
The Future
Stu not too long ago participated within the Bitcoin Open Supply Software program (BOSS) program by Chaincode Labs, a program designed as a means for builders new to the Bitcoin ecosystem to chop their tooth and shortly develop a deeper understanding of and expertise with constructing on Bitcoin.
Going ahead Stu goes to contribute to the Char Community, a considerably off the radar effort to construct a brand new bitcoin staking platform led by Jeremy Rubin, the developer who designed and proposed CTV. He plans to proceed engaged on his private facet tasks and contributing to open supply tasks as effectively, with the eventual objective of beginning to contribute to Bitcoin Core itself.
Stu had this to say about Bitcoiners’ priorities going into the longer term:
“Our primary focus needs to be on making self custody higher. It actually sucks proper now, and I believe extra Bitcoiners generally must admit that. Backing up 12 phrases does sound easy, but it surely actually isn’t that straightforward, and nobody is doing it.”
