Talking about OP_Codes: How AVM will "restart" the Bitcoin programming era

Author: Leaper

Bitcoin, as "digital gold", has been regarded as a target of value storage for many years.

Has anyone ever thought that this is a forced act?

Is it possible that Bitcoin once had the means and the opportunity to have a prosperous ecosystem and complex applications like Ethereum, but "had to" be stopped.

This was a major decision made by Satoshi Nakamoto before he retired - for security (to avoid potential denial of service attacks), a series of original operation codes (OP Codes) were disabled. These operation codes were used for binary operations and complex calculations, and could have enabled the writing of advanced scripts.

Among them, the more well-known is OP_CAT, the data connection operation code. Today, people are also talking about plans to restart it (BIP-420).

At that time, Bitcoin did not dare to be so radical. Therefore, relatively conservative measures have limited the development of smart contracts on Bitcoin.

Therefore, people have always been thinking: If Bitcoin had not disabled the original opcodes at that time, how would the Bitcoin ecosystem develop? What kind of security issues might Bitcoin encounter?

In fact, there have been several huge social experiments exploring this issue, such as BSV and BCH. In these forked versions of Bitcoin, the original opcodes not only highly expand the potential for ecological development, but also tell the currency circle after years of experimental proof that they will not cause any security issues or denial of service attacks.

So, is it possible for OP_Codes to be restarted? When is the most appropriate time to restart?Today, the gradually prosperous Bitcoin ecosystem has given the answer.

With the development of Bitcoin itself, today, "scalability" is returning to Bitcoin. Ordinals, Atomicals, Runes, Stamp... countless extension protocols and standards have been born, and they are surging in the current Bitcoin mainnet.

More and more possibilities can be technically realized in the current Bitcoin basic environment, including the concept of AVM (Atomicals Virtual Machine) under the Atomicals protocol, which aims to realize smart contracts on Bitcoin by simulating the Bitcoin virtual machine.

Arthur, the founder of the Atomicals protocol, believes that we can fully open OP_Codes in some way to completely liberate Bitcoin's native programming capabilities.

All these possibilities existed at the beginning, but it was not suitable for the world at that time. Today's Bitcoin is different from the past, and the development space of the "Bitcoin ecosystem" has been fully opened.

The implementation of AVM essentially provides a platform for testing the original opcodes in the protocol virtual layer. Everyone can test and apply Bitcoin's original opcodes based on the AVM method. Some people also compare it to "cloud bitcoin". In the current bitcoin ecosystem, the digital asset categories such as inscriptions, runes, stamps, etc. that we see can be regarded as a kind of "overlay protocol" based on bitcoin. AVM does not modify bitcoin itself, but creates a method for overlay protocols at this level. All overlay protocols (not limited to Atomicals) can actively adopt AVM. This solution is actually the result of the natural evolution of the bitcoin ecosystem and such overlay protocols, providing a development platform for the original operation code for the entire bitcoin ecosystem.

“We propose a method to create and execute smart contracts for various types of overlay digital assets by simulating the Bitcoin Virtual Machine and its script interpreter. In this method, the Bitcoin blockchain not only provides timestamps and data for smart contract programs stored on the chain, but also executes these programs in a sandbox environment through various overlay protocol indexers. Overlay protocol indexer nodes are jointly managed by application developers, service providers and users, forming a spontaneous consensus. This concept and its technology are widely applicable to all overlay protocols, and only need to be appropriately adjusted for their respective overlay protocol indexers.”

——AVM white paper paragraph excerpt

In the environment of Bitcoin’s limited resources, native OP_Codes are the most efficient way to program. It belongs to Bitcoin, and in a sufficiently secure environment, it is the optimal solution for Bitcoin’s technical expansion.

If Bitcoin had to be used only as "digital gold" after OP_Codes were disabled, then this time AVM brings OP_Codes back to Bitcoin, which is a huge Bitcoin application experiment. This time, we will witness whether Bitcoin can be "more than just digital gold". How will Bitcoin develop with the imagination space opened up? From digital gold to gold ecology, gold industry chain, complex gold financial system...It is not an exaggeration to call the Bitcoin ecology after AVM "Bitcoin 2.0".

In fact, many Bitcoin developers also believe that the restart of Bitcoin's own opcodes is likely to be the general trend of history. And AVM has moved ahead to the possible future. The white paper said frankly: "We hope that Bitcoin will eventually be able to re-enable all the original opcodes, thereby releasing the maximum potential created by Satoshi Nakamoto."

Can Bitcoin have an ecosystem? Should Bitcoin have an ecosystem? AVM will give us the answer.