Chia Lisp For Bitcoiners

Simplicity, a programming language used in blockchain development, introduces an innovative concept known as "pruning." This feature allows for the trimming of unexecuted branches through a Merkle Tree structure when a program is disclosed. This methodology contrasts with the approach taken by Chia Lisp, where both branches of an if statement are evaluated, regardless of the condition's outcome. The pruning capability in Simplicity not only offers potential privacy enhancements but also aids in reducing the amount of data stored on the blockchain.

The concept of pruning in Simplicity somewhat mirrors the manual efforts required in Chia Lisp to achieve similar outcomes. In Chia Lisp, the standard transaction format incorporates the foundational idea of taproot, which facilitates a transition from merely providing a signature to engaging more complex scripts dubbed "hidden puzzles." This is achieved by producing a hash of the concealed script utilizing the sha256tree1 function. Although integrating taproot-style MAST (Merkle Abstract Syntax Trees), which involves having a top-level merkle tree of scripts and selecting one for evaluation, might appear challenging, it is feasible with some ingenuity. Specifically, this would entail replacing (i COND CODE hash) with (a (i COND (q . CODE) (q x))) while concurrently constructing the overall hash of the expression, thereby allowing for a more nuanced AST (Abstract Syntax Tree) resolution.