Comment by TD-Linux | Hacker News Reader

Comment by TD-Linux | Hacker News Reader

The author's assertion that "nobody uses Bitcoin Script" is a bit silly - EVERY transaction uses Bitcoin Script, just a very simple one, for addresses [1]. The next most popular scripts implement multisig. OpenTimestamps also uses a simple script to commit a hash in a transaction. Currently uncommon uses are HTLC's which allow you to spend based on a zk-SNARK [2], and the Lightning network.

I would actually say a bigger difference is that Bitcoin state is limited to a set of unspent transaction outputs with value (UTXO set), whereas Ethereum allows the script to store arbitrary state in its output.

On a side note, Proof of Stake is a really cool feature if it works, but Ethereum doesn't have it, only the promise that it would hardfork to it if a viable solution is found.

[1] https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Script

[2] https://bitcoincore.org/en/2016/02/26/zero-knowledge-conting...

(and yeah, I had to use Fx reader mode to parse the jumble of text at all)

I agree, that was poor wording on my end... Thank you for the clarification.

I should have said that it's very limited and much more difficult to use than Ethereum's smart contracts.

I also wanted to avoid going into a deeper discussion that would involved the potential adoption of segwit, which would enable lightning networks and a bunch of other sidechains.

> I should have said that it's very limited and much more difficult to use than Ethereum's smart contracts.

I think the biggest issue with Bitcoin Script is that only a subset of scripts is considered "standard" [0] and only standard transactions are propagated by the network. If you can find a miner that accepts non standard TX then it's fine and blockchain already contains some interesting transactions (like lottery [1]).

[0]: https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/21123/which-scri...

[1]: https://curiosity-driven.org/bitcoin-contracts#multilottery

I've seen wallet code that is hardcoded to handle only common scripts. That'll certainly get you to your MVP faster without needing to implement the whole script engine.

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