The Untold Story of CTV | With Jeremy Rubin

The introduction of covenants to Bitcoin has been a long-standing debate—one recently brought back into consideration with the memetically-driven advocacy of “OP_CAT” by the Taproot Wizards.

In previous history, the most likely contender for a covenants-enabling OP code was “CTV” (check template verify)—a simpler and more narrow way to enable covenants—that, while once considered radical, is now seen as the “conservative choice” relative to CAT.

Serious discussions about implementing CTV have re-emerged with vigor—with many speculating it will be the “likely winner” for a potential covenant soft fork, given its popularity “across the aisles” of Bitcoin Season 1 and 2 players.

This all being said—the full story of CTV has been almost 10 years in the making—with author Jeremy Rubin being put through the ringer of Bitcoin politics along the way.

In this episode, Jeremy and I explore:

-Jeremy’s early experiences with the judicial system after being accused of cybercrimes for web-based work as a student at MIT

-The history of covenants proposals on Bitcoin and their cultural responses in the “Bitcoin Scaling” community

-The development of OP_CTV and its distinctions from other covenants proposals

-His experience navigating the murky waters of Bitcoin governance—and ultimately, the brutal political realities of attempting to upgrade Bitcoin

As always, you can view this episode on YouTube or Spotify via the linktree in my bio—YouTube link in comments as well.

This episode is powered by Best In Slot (@bestinslotxyz), the leading API for Ordinals and BRC20 data aggregation and indexing—as well as Citrea (@citrea_xyz ), a leading 'Bitcoin Rollup' technology and core contributor to the BitVM alliance.

TIMESTAMPS:

01:00 Jeremy Rubin: Child Star Engineer and Libertarian

04:00 Jeremy’s first bitcoin purchase and hackathon

05:50 Subpoenaed by the State of New Jersey

10:30 Receiving support from MIT University

12:50 The first BTC airdrop at MIT!

16:20 Bitcoin VCs and the dawn of the scaling debate

18:40 ‘Scaling Bitcoin’ conference and creation of SegWit

23:50 What inspired CTV and covenants for Jeremy?

25:10 Reactive security wallet: protecting against hackers

27:30 Opposition to covenants and “being like Ethereum”

29:02 What types of covenants do people want?

35:00 Pitching “Bitcoin assets” to Ycombinator

37:00 Emulating covenants with pre-signed transactions

40:40 Why were sidechains not interested in covenants?

41:25 Liquid sidechain’s “major security event.”

43:30 What exactly does CTV do?

45:45 How is CTV different from other covenant proposals?

47:02 Campaigning for covenants - take 2

48:50 CTV is good for lightning!

49:46 How Taproot roadblocked Jeremy’s CTV campaign

55:00 Why does CTV need a supporting language?

57:20 Are there non-Bitcoin supporting languages?

01:00:00 Sapio: a complement to covenants

01:01:10 Did Sapio make CTV a less “conservative” change?

01:04:00 Jeremy’s political strategy for CTV

01:05:55 Marketing campaigns for Bitcoin softforks

01:09:00 Why was CTV so feared, despite Jeremy’s caution?

01:10:00 Andreas Antonopoulos’ influence on CTV FUD

01:12:20 Why Jeremy forfeited the CTV campaign

01:13:10 Re-engineering Sapio to be CTV independent

01:16:00 Reflecting on Bitcoin’s governance issues

01:19:20 Core devs unable to maintain an OP_Return change

01:20:04 How do we get Bitcoin devs to talk to the plebs?

01:24:15 Do devs just not want to be public-facing?

01:25:35 Forget grant programs: give devs seed funding

01:26:55 Where does Chaincode Labs stand out?