Bitcoin PIPEs v2 | Misha Komarov SLP776

Stephan Livera (0:00)

Hi, everyone, welcome back to Stephan Livera Podcast. Joining me on the show today is Misha Komarov from Allocinit. Misha is a co-founder there and we'll be chatting a bit about Bitcoin pipes V2 and what that potentially enables for Bitcoin. So first off, welcome to the show, Misha.

Misha Komarov (0:16)

Hey, thanks for inviting me.

Stephan Livera (0:18)

So Misha, let's start with, I guess, just quick background on yourself. Just take a minute and tell people who don't know you.

Misha Komarov (0:26)

Okay. So hey, I'm Misha.

I mean, actually, I've been around for a while. When I've done a ton of stuff, there was such a thing, a lot just all over crypto, honestly.

Quite started from doing things on Bitcoin when it was 2013 It was the Bitmessage, if you do remember the thing. It's like I helped with the CTP implementation. It's still somewhere around the Internet, if you can find it. It's probably my code out there. This is all, whatever, just doing the implementation. A ton of stuff just all over crypto, around Ethereum, like the Don co-founded back in the day. Like Nell Foundation, there was such a thing, like a proof system research thing around Ethereum, helped effectively to bootstrap LIDAR, like it's a liquid staking thing. And, you know, but honestly, after we had all of these, all of this proof system research around Ethereum, there was always, you know, kind of a question on my mind, what if we can make it helpful for Bitcoin? Because like nobody really was looking at it, mostly. So that's how we came to like what we did.

Stephan Livera (1:32)

Yeah. And so talk to us a little bit about, you know, the approach you're taking with Bitcoin pipes and now the more recent version pipes V2.

Misha Komarov (1:42)

Yeah.

Stephan Livera (1:42)

As I understand, you're trying to do things that would otherwise require, you know, typical covenant kinds of things in Bitcoin. Talk to us a little bit about that.

Misha Komarov (1:52)

Okay. Let's talk about that, right? So what's the never-ending conversation in Bitcoin? New opcodes. It's a conversation which we've had since, like, since I didn't remember. Like since I came around, like in 2013, I realized conversation about, oh, let's add this opcode, let's disable that opcode. Let's like, it's a never-ending conversation. And for certain upgrades, for certain improvements, it of course kind of makes sense to like, you know, get maybe a little bit upgraded somewhere here and there for security purposes, for example, or like for bug fixing or whatever. Like we had early on with like, you know, these early Satoshi era supply bonds, or like we're having, you know, kind of potentially like it's kind of a little bit of a fad around quantum thing, right? Okay, not a fad, but still, it's, you know, we'd better to come up with a way to like protect against that. And but there are always those conversations that are kind of Bitcoin, which involve things which are nice to have, like which are just not crucial for the existence of the Bitcoin itself. Things like, hey, let's add CTD, like the opcode CTD, like let's add CSFS. Let's add, I mean, we had a recent whole drama about OpCap. There is a bunch of other proposals, like we had a proposal about OpVol, we had a proposal like a bunch of other different kind of ways to induce governance, etc. And there was always this kind of never ending conversation. And as I said, kind of because of all of this, because it's just not so important to upgrade Bitcoin for the sake of things which are nice to have.

Like it's just too big right now. It's like don't touch it, right?

Don't risk the whole thing for the sake of things which are nice to have. So the question was always like, okay, how do we actually give people what they want? Because it's a never-ending thing without actually touching Bitcoin. This is where, as I said, the whole proof system research we've accumulated just all over the industry, I would say, came to the rescue. It turns out, like in 2024, it turned out that we actually can emulate certain type of upcodes without touching Bitcoin itself, like the behavior of certain type of upcodes without touching Bitcoin itself. It turns out that some of these upcodes actually allow us to use certain type of confidence without touching Bitcoin itself.

Sure, there are things like DLCs, there are things like something else, but all of those kind of like pre-signed transaction tricks, but all of those are either custodial, either they are reducing a lot of trust assumptions, either they're not flexible enough, so you can't really induce various behavior, like just any kind of behavior. So, and that's why effectively we kind of came up, and that's why I published back in October 2024, the paper called Bitcoin Pipes. There was this idea that you could effectively via witness encryption or functional encryption, depending on what works first, right?