Thank you for the continued discussion. While STARK technology is undeniably powerful and battle-tested, enshrining a monolithic OP_STARK_VERIFY opcode into Bitcoin’s consensus layer fundamentally misaligns with the protocol’s core design principles of simplicity, security, and long-term stability.
You are right to highlight the success of this technology in systems like Starknet. Its maturity is not in question. However, the security model and risk profile of an L2 or a smart contract platform are fundamentally different from those of Bitcoin’s L1 consensus. The core issue is not the quality of STARKs, but the immense and irreversible risk of embedding such a complex, specific system directly into Bitcoin.
Here are the key reasons why this approach is problematic:
1. Consensus Risk: An Irreversible Black Box
Bitcoin’s consensus is built on simple, auditable primitives. OP_STARK_VERIFY would introduce a complex “black box” of tens of thousands of lines of code. Unlike a verifier contract on an L2 which can be upgraded if a bug is found, a consensus rule on Bitcoin is permanent. A subtle bug leading to a soundness failure or a non-deterministic behavior (chain split) would be a catastrophic and irreversible event for the entire network.
2. Economic Risk: Unpredictable and Unbounded Costs
The proposal breaks Bitcoin’s simple resource management model. The validation cost (CPU/memory) of a STARK proof is not proportional to its byte size. This allows for the creation of “computationally-dense proofs” transactions that are cheap in fees (vBytes) but extremely expensive for every node in the network to validate. This is a critical Denial-of-Service vector that threatens decentralization by pushing resource requirements higher.
3. Long-Term Risk: Protocol Ossification
The field of ZK cryptography is evolving at an incredible pace. Enshrining a specific version of STARKs, even a mature one, locks Bitcoin into a technology that will inevitably become obsolete. This creates permanent technical debt and bloat. The flexibility to upgrade and adapt, which L2s like Starknet possess, is a critical advantage that would be lost at the Bitcoin base layer.
A more prudent path, consistent with Bitcoin’s design, is to keep such complexity at higher layers or, if necessary, consider introducing generic, composable primitives rather than monolithic, application-specific solutions.