Bithoven: A Formally Verified, Imperative Smart Contract Language for Bitcoin

This initiative is designed to enhance ease of use for developers while meeting the stringent safety requirements essential for Bitcoin Script operations. Bithoven's utilization of an LR(1) parser and static analysis techniques is intended to ensure type safety and prevent common security vulnerabilities, such as unauthorized spending without a signature. The language's compiler is adept at managing stack operations efficiently and optimizing opcodes to support various Bitcoin address formats including legacy, segwit, and taproot. A notable focus has been placed on eliminating undefined behavior through formal semantic definitions and safety validations, efforts that are extensively documented.

Bithoven’s design philosophy, which emphasizes a clean stack after each operation, reflects its alignment with the operational principles of Bitcoin Script, aiming for accessibility and expressiveness. The project encourages community engagement and feedback through resources like a GitHub repository, a Web IDE, official documentation, and a foundational verification paper. These tools are geared towards facilitating access to Bithoven and fostering collaborative development.

The exploration of employing a specific compiler as an alternative for implementing STARK proofs and transaction introspection suggests a curiosity about leveraging this compiler's capabilities for cryptographic operations and smart contract functionalities. This discussion delves into the technical challenges associated with STARK proofs and transaction introspection techniques, highlighting the ongoing dialogue within the programming and cryptocurrency communities to find efficient, secure, and less disruptive implementation methods.

Bithoven v0.0.1’s development prioritizes mainnet safety and strictly adheres to SegWit/Taproot protocols, deliberately excluding experimental opcodes like OP_CAT. Plans are underway to make syntax more intuitive for users, particularly in handling Merkle paths by redefining the + operator for dual functionality, depending on the context. Although Schnorr Introspection is not yet implemented, there is openness to exploring this feature through similar means, indicating a collaborative approach to refining the compiler's capabilities.

The discussion around simplification strategies in formalizing covenants highlights the balance between ease of formalization and maintaining comprehensive introspection capabilities. This challenge underscores the importance of introspection for verification, analysis, and optimization purposes, suggesting a nuanced consideration of how these strategies might influence system functionality and transparency.

A potential collaboration between Bithoven and a project focused on formalizing state-bound assets on Bitcoin through the 'W' protocol is discussed. Bithoven’s static analyzer is seen as instrumental in addressing introspective patterns and integrating them into its grammar, indicating that Bithoven’s capabilities could play a crucial role in tackling implementation challenges within the 'W' protocol framework.

Lastly, Bithoven does not restrict access to witness data, allowing developers to declare it with fewer restrictions. However, limitations exist regarding manual stack opcode management and static analysis for safety. An experimental code snippet demonstrates a practical approach to introspection within Bithoven's constraints, proposing a simplified method for achieving introspection that aligns with Bithoven's safety measures and existing framework. This approach underlines the platform's commitment to analyzability over expressiveness, acknowledging future support for advanced features like covenants once they are activated on the mainnet.