Home >News >Business >sCrypt Wins Bitcoin Olympic Award with OP_CAT
Blockchain scripting and contracting company sCrypt shows how it is possible to make payments on one blockchain and receive assets on another, leading to the 2024 Bitcoin Olympic Hackathon (Litecoin truck). A team of software engineers Mihael Šinkec and Yusuf Idi Maina leveraged BTC Signet’s SPV and opcode OP_CAT to demonstrate a transaction in which a buyer purchases BTC Ordinal tokens using Litecoin.
sCrypt said this demonstration expands the possibilities for DeFi applications by directly exchanging one type of digital asset for another between transacting parties. There is no need for coordination between the two parties, and there is no need to trust third-party intermediaries such as exchanges.
Announcing the winners of the Litecoin track #BitcoinOlympic 🥁🥁 For proposing trustless cross-chain interoperability between #bitcoin and #litecoin By utilizing #OPCAT opcode.
Winner: 🏆 @scryptplatform & @gashinge9989 Congratulations!! https://t.co/rChp0J78eU
— Litecoin Foundation ⚡️ (@LTCFoundation) September 8, 2024
Šinkec said the companies used sCrypt’s SDK because building such transactions using raw BTC ASM (assembly code used to create custom scripts) would be complex. The SDK allows developers to work with the more familiar TypeScript and focus on contract logic instead. Šinkec and Maina verified pre-images of transactions on the stack and validated them with “simple function calls” of BTC covenants.
This process also uses Litecoin’s Simple Payment Verification (SPV), which uses the data and Merkle path to reconstruct the transaction’s Merkle root and compares it to the transaction’s block header. SPV allows clients to check the validity of block headers without having to fully download the blockchain.
Šinkec explained the process on Medium, writing that it is difficult to verify Litecoin proof of transactions using BTC scripts because the two blockchains use different PoW algorithms. The team used oracles that can prove the validity of Litecoin transactions and Lamport signatures that can be verified with BTC scripts.
The Litecoin SPV proof was then used to unlock the BTC Ordinal tokens placed in the BTC Covenant and transfer the assets to the recipient’s BTC address. “Conventions” allow programmers to impose constraints on how a particular coin is used in future transactions.
Why do we need OP_CAT?
Mr. Shinkek explained the contract transaction as follows:
“Enabling OP_CAT on BTC opens up many possibilities, including validation of conventions and Merkle proofs. We leveraged both of these mechanisms to implement Ordinal Selling List as a convention on BTC. We accept Litecoin as a payment option without going through any middlemen.
OP_CAT is an opcode that existed in the original 2009 Bitcoin protocol that allows programmers to concatenate two items on the stack. This allows for the possibility of more sophisticated transaction scripts, expanding the range of applications and potential use cases for Bitcoin.
However, in a move similar to the one that imposed a “temporary” 1MB block size limit on BTC, OP_CAT and other original opcodes are being used by malicious actors to “spam” and overwhelm the network. Bitcoin was disabled very early in its life due to concerns that it would Before we have the resources to combat such behavior. The BSV blockchain re-enabled OP_CAT along with other original opcodes in 2019/2020. This is one of many moves that expanded BSV’s capabilities and restored Satoshi Nakamoto’s original vision for Bitcoin.
There are also moves to re-enable OP_CAT on the BTC main network, but this has not yet happened as of this writing. For now, sCrypt’s cross-chain transactions only work on BTC Signet, a more closed alternative testnet for blockchain apps to experiment with new transaction types. OP_CAT is re-enabled on BTC Signet.
sCrypt’s award-winning project connects the Litecoin and BTC Signet blockchains, so it’s more theoretical than ready-to-use as it currently exists. However, since OP_CAT runs on BSV and has been running for five years now, developers can use this process to enable cross-chain payments. BSV has shown time and again that blockchain technology can be used more creatively for creative developers looking for new opportunities.
Watch: sCrypt wants to bring its hackathon efforts to more people
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