[Ep. #10] Bitcoin Covenants & Collider Script

Podcast

March 19, 2025

In this episode, Patrick Murck sits down with Ethan Heilman, Research Engineer at Cloudflare and Bitcoin Research Collaborator at MIT DCI, to discuss the complexities of Bitcoin’s scripting limitations, how Collider Script, a novel way to bridge Big Script and Small Script, is pushing the boundaries of what’s possible with Bitcoin covenants, and what the future holds for programmable money.

‍Key takeaways include:

Bitcoin’s Scripting Limitations: Why Bitcoin’s design restricts programmability—and why that matters.
ColliderScript & Covenants: How a novel cryptographic approach enables complex spending conditions without protocol changes.
The Cost of Execution: How the cost of executing a ColliderScript-based covenant is currently equivalent to the electricity cost of buying a fighter jet—and what could be done to make them more practical over time.

Read the ColliderScript paper: https://eprint.iacr.org/2024/1802

Explore more of Ethan Heilman’s work: https://www.ethanheilman.com/

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