op_ctv still has no technical objections

In a recent discussion on the Bitcoin Development Mailing List, an intriguing point was made regarding the development and evaluation of new opcodes within Bitcoin's scripting language. The conversation highlighted the significant amount of time, spanning an entire year, that has been invested in exploring various combinations of opcodes. This exploration has been critical in understanding their potential interactions and implications for Bitcoin's ecosystem.

A set of threshold rules was proposed as an evaluation framework to guide this exploration. These rules focus on fine-grained introspection, state-carrying covenants, bigint operations, and the introduction of new arithmetic capabilities through the use of lookup tables. These criteria are designed to assess the viability and safety of integrating new opcodes. They serve as crucial elements for developing exogenous asset protocols that are interactable through Bitcoin's script and for creating novel bridge constructions. Such developments, however, come with concerns regarding their possible adverse effects on mining decentralization, a cornerstone of Bitcoin's security and operational integrity.

The conversation also touched upon the challenges faced by many other proposals which tend to violate one or more of these threshold rules, highlighting the difficulty in achieving enhancements without compromising key aspects of the network. Despite these challenges, there is an encouragement for further exploration and experimentation within the community. The aim is to identify potentially "nasty" outcomes or interactions that could undermine the network's stability or security, thereby fostering a cautious yet innovative approach to development within the Bitcoin protocol.

This discussion underscores the careful consideration and rigorous scrutiny applied by developers to ensure that any additions or changes to Bitcoin's scripting capabilities not only offer new functionalities but also maintain, if not enhance, the network's foundational principles.