OP_CHECKCONTRACTVERIFY and its amount semantic

The discussion presents an examination of a programming technique involving the handling of input amounts and their manipulation within a stack-based system. The approach under scrutiny involves two primary operations: firstly, the OP_IN_AMOUNT operation, which pushes the given input amount onto the stack; and secondly, the CCV (Conditional Compilation Variable) operation with value introspection capabilities. This latter operation is designed to take a value off the stack—potentially exceeding four bytes in size—and allocate it towards an output while simultaneously pushing the remainder, or 'residual', of the input back onto the stack. Notably, this residual is defined as the entirety of the initial amount minus the specified amount allocated to the output.

The person providing the analysis finds the opt-out semantic inherent to this technique to be both natural and beneficial for a wide array of cases. However, they raise concerns regarding the potential error-prone nature of introducing amounts onto the stack without the support of bignums (arbitrary-precision numbers). This concern stems from the observation that starting with 4-byte amounts and aggregating them into larger 5-byte sums could complicate operations due to the increased risk of errors. Furthermore, the individual posits that if one were to adhere to a principle where "equality checks is all you need" beyond the use of CCV, then it might be possible to circumvent the complexities and pitfalls associated with performing mathematical operations altogether. This perspective suggests a minimalist approach might offer a more streamlined and less error-prone methodology for handling such operations within this context.