OP_CAT Could Be Working Live on Bitcoin in 12 Months: Eli Ben Sasson

Starkware CEO Eli Ben Sasson says he expects OP_CAT — a major upgrade to the Bitcoin network — to be available sometime in the next 12 months.

Speaking to Cointelegraph at DevCon 2024 in Thailand, Ben-Sasson said the introduction of OP_CAT will enable new functionality on Bitcoin, including “commitments, ZK-rollups and Layer 2 networks.”

Specifically, the introduction of OP_CAT Starknet will be the first layer-2 network to run natively on Bitcoin and Ethereum.

While OP_CAT is an undeniably complex upgrade for Bitcoin, with a multifaceted set of upgrades, Ben-Sasson's concept behind it is actually quite simple.

“If you think of Bitcoin as an old scientific calculator – unlike your smartphone, it can run any number of applications – but it can do a lot of calculations.”

“OP_CAT adds a button to this scientific calculator, which can be used to ‘concatenate' or concatenate a string of characters. So this thing is just for concatenating two strings.” […] And it lets you use a Bitcoin calculator to scan files, run programs, read long stuff and work on them,” said Ben Sasson.

OP_CAT — short for “operation code concatenate” — refers to a string of code first implemented into the Bitcoin network by Satoshi Nakamoto. However, Nakamoto was initially concerned that OP_CAT could expose the Bitcoin network to security risks, and in 2010 it was purged of active opcodes as part of a broader effort to make Bitcoin simpler and more robust.

But in October 2023, cryptographer Ethan Helman and Botanics Labs lead engineer Armin Saburi breathed fresh life into the OP_CAT idea, proposing to re-enable the opcode with a soft fork into the Bitcoin network.

Ben-Sasson says the goal of moving from OP_CAT and Starkware to Bitcoin's L2 space is to allow Bitcoin to achieve its “original mission and purpose.”

Related: Nansen Scales Beyond Ethereum with Bitcoin L2 Integration

“[It would see Bitcoin become] A payment network, which is currently too expensive to be that. So you can buy your coffee without paying 10 times more than coffee,” said Ben Sasson.

Starkware's CEO spoke about the Bitcoin L2 build at the Bitcoin Next conference in Bangkok on November 13.

Many experts told Cointelegraph that the introduction of OP_CAT means that Bitcoin may eventually surpass Ethereum in terms of decentralized financial activity and scale.

While there is a lot of fuss over the number of Bitcoin “sidechains” that are often classified as Bitcoin L2s, they are not what experts call true layer-2 networks.

This is because sidechains are not native to the Bitcoin network, often using a two-way peg as a proof-of-stakes model or a pooling method.

Lachlan Feeney, co-founder of Web3 development firm Labras, told Cointelegraph that the problem with sidechains is that they don't provide the necessary level of security or innovation to ensure the use of idle bitcoin for the notoriously conservative Bitcoin OGs.

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