Why all Bitcoiners should support covenants \ stacker news ~bitcoin

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Why all Bitcoiners should support covenants lightco.in/2025/09/12/covenants/

2796 sats \ 20 comments \ @lightcoin 13h bitcoin

160 sats \ 4 replies \ @lightcoin OP 13h

I wrote this in response to this video from @jimmysong

Right now you can do some form of covenants on the main chain simply by creating the transactions that would be the exit points of a UTXO and then throwing the private key away. As far as I know, no one really does this.

Isn't this basically what Spark is doing?

Also, @benthecarman replied this:

the annex is not used for inscriptions and taproot did not make take only 1 tx instead of 2. this is misinformation.

also on "there is no market demand", the fact that the primary way people use lightning is through custodial system is a pretty clear show of failing of the current system. maybe there is no demand for self custodial payments, but we'll never know if we don't try

202 sats \ 1 reply \ @lightcoin OP 10h

Spark is an implementation of a statechain, which does something different than a covenant: statechains enable the offchain transfer of UTXOs by essentially passing around the private key to a UTXO offchain. The reason this is considered secure is because it's actually only one private key in a 2-of-2 multisig, with the other key owned by a central "statechain entity", who "promises" to only co-sign transfers that conform to the protocol. There are more details to it than that, but that is the gist. I'm not aware of any improvements that covenants can make specific to statechains.

A "real world" example of a key deletion covenant would be what Rewind wallet does.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @ek 8h

Thank you! So this is why he said "no one really does this" because Spark is not a covenant (onchain), but a statechain (offchain), right?

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @nitter 13h

https://xcancel.com/jimmysong/status/1965198902564700651

257 sats \ 10 replies \ @justin_shocknet 12h

If you support covenants, you're not a bitcoiner, but a shitcoiner that wants Bitcoin to look like this:

Covenants enable one thing, delegation to centralized apps, centralized apps that can only be used to mis-represent themselves as Bitcoin, generate swap-fees, and conduct surveillance through coordination services and aforementioned swaps.

Sure, these things happen now, but if they are succesful in getting their shitfork activated it'll lend them undue credibility with unsophisticated users that will be hurt.

Bitcoin becoming more like ethereum has no upside, it's just high time preference degenerate behavior that creates systemic risks should any of these Fake L2's grow in size.

It's now these fake, surveillance prone, dark-funded subchains that are directing development priorities among both Core and Knots... a true tragedy of the commons unlike Bitcoin has ever seen.

Jimmy good, more people should think critically like Jimmy. @jimmysong, my only nit is that you be more toxic on this issue, we need you.

covenants enable concrete improvements to the usability of Ark

Ark is a scam fake L2 and anything that's good for them is bad for Bitcoin

improved usability for products built on Ark, DLCs, and Lightning

Lnhance should be referred to to as gaslight-ning, it's an attack on Lightning in its effort to remove the justice tx that disincentivizes unreliable node operators, it's only reliable node operators that allow the network function.

Channel factories, as its most notable "enhancement", are indicative in it's uselessness. Channel batching already exists and achieves 80% cost reductions, yet no one uses it because cost is not a bottleneck.

Covenants do not introduce any new risks

This can only be asserted by a naive, hubristic person, and immediately invalidates their opinion.

Blockstack

See the first line.

245 sats \ 3 replies \ @standardcrypto 12h

what problem is covenants trying to solve?

"I need shitcoins on Bitcoin to ROI my investors before they break my kneecaps." that one doesn't count.

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @justin_shocknet 11h

@DarthCoin we need a meme for this

17 sats \ 0 replies \ @DarthCoin 11h

indeed.

EDIT: I think you already made that meme with the image you just posted :) They are a meme in itself LOL

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @lightcoin OP 11h

https://lightco.in/2025/09/12/covenants/

119 sats \ 3 replies \ @Car 11h

Interesting you bring this up this way I keep hearing this more and more about covenants. Why would all the other “bitcoin devs” be pro covenants are they not thinking through the pitfalls?

17 sats \ 1 reply \ @SimpleStacker 11h

I just watched this video from Jimmy Song (5 min) and it definitely pushed me in the anti-covenant direction: #1218881

Especially his point about evidence for demand

12 sats \ 0 replies \ @lightcoin OP 11h

Conveniently, we can simply invert the reasons he gave for opposing covenant soft forks and have a solid, actually-true list of reasons for supporting covenant soft forks

https://lightco.in/2025/09/12/covenants/

142 sats \ 0 replies \ @justin_shocknet 11h

The reasons are many

Just because someone is a dev doesn't mean they're an adversarial thinker, or understand systems, code is just a means to an end.

Shell devs for example (which I consider myself), are often deferential to "Core" devs because a javascript framework is a different skillset than say, Bitcoin script.

Incentives are the most obvious reason the higher up you go, as mentioned the funding from Fake L2's is pervasive. Core is an NGO at this stage, Knots-Ocean has overlapping funding. Active development = Activist development.

On the lower-end, it's typical psyop effect... bandwagon jumping, ingrouping, current-thing maximalism, ethos pathos and logos virtue signaling... all one NGO has to do is get a few influenzas to astruturf that you hate poors, newcoiners, and new use-cases if you don't support their stupid ideas that don't actually help any of those things. People will enthusiastically support the dumbest shit imaginable as long as they can tell themselves what a good person they are for doing so. "Useful idiots" exemplify how virtues are easily weaponized.

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @lightcoin OP 11h

100 sats \ 0 replies \ @justin_shocknet 11h

cry harder snowflake

0 sats \ 2 replies \ @xz 10h

"Go ahead, do your worst… think of the scariest risk imaginable for covenants."

Questions, questions .. to piggyback on what @justin_shocknet wrote about systems and languages ..

Would introducing covenants require adding code to the code-base? Before I would try to weigh pros and cons, I wonder whether:

As AI becomes more useful as agentic systems development tools, what vulnerabilities might not be found and exploited by a human dev, but could by intelligent neural networks working for an adversary?
Will there be certain unforeseen economic attack vectors, such as mempools becoming congested, as seen in the past, that would make the basic operation and utility become an issue? (again, thinking how an adversarial strategist may want to game and disrupt current usage. * I read you covered that, but just wondered if that is not a serious trade-off for you.
Would covenants soft-fork increase overheads for running a node? Along with the whole core 30 changes. I guess I'm pretty decided that I won't be upgrading.

102 sats \ 1 reply \ @lightcoin OP 9h

Would introducing covenants require adding code to the code-base?

yes

As AI becomes more useful as agentic systems development tools, what vulnerabilities might not be found and exploited by a human dev, but could by intelligent neural networks working for an adversary?

Not sure how I, a human, am supposed to answer this question. My post does explicitly acknowledge (and set aside) the issue of implementation risks, though.

Will there be certain unforeseen economic attack vectors, such as mempools becoming congested, as seen in the past, that would make the basic operation and utility become an issue? (again, thinking how an adversarial strategist may want to game and disrupt current usage. * I read you covered that, but just wondered if that is not a serious trade-off for you.

A full mempool is a good problem to have as far as I'm concerned. It's also something that could happen with or without a covenant soft fork. So we should have the tooling to deal with that situation in any case.

Would covenants soft-fork increase overheads for running a node?

Maybe, maybe not. Again something that could happen with or without a covenant soft fork, and something we should have the tooling to deal with in any case. See projects like Utreexo and Zerosync for examples of mitigations for node bloat.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @xz 9h

Thanks.

I do see some of the trade-offs for both for and against, but feel hard to be persuaded that there'd be minimal risk. I know it's the age-old ossification debate, but I'm erring on the side of caution.

Not sure how I, a human, am supposed to answer this question. My post does explicitly acknowledge (and set aside) the issue of implementation risks, though.

Sorry, I didn't mean you can answer that, was just wondering if developing a code-base (with growth in ai usage) is seen as a threat by proficient Bitcoin devs.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @ek 10h

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