Why Bitcoin smart contracts are not developed?

[GazetaBitcoin]

In an email sent by Satoshi to Wei Dai on January 10th, 2009, he mentioned the possibility of smart contracts within the Bitcoin network:

From: Satoshi Nakamoto
Sent: Saturday, January 10, 2009 11:17 AM
To: weidai@weidai.com
Subject: Re: Citation of your b-money page

I wanted to let you know, I just released the full implementation of the paper I sent you a few months ago, Bitcoin v0.1.  Details, download and screenshots are at www.bitcoin.org

I think it achieves nearly all the goals you set out to solve in your b-money paper.

The system is entirely decentralized, without any server or trusted parties.  The network infrastructure can support a full range of escrow transactions and contracts, but for now the focus is on the basics of money and transactions. [...]

However, since then, as far as I know, Bitcoin smart contracts were never developed, at least by Bitcoin developers.

I discovered recently a topic where smart contracts on Bitcoin were mentioned by amishmanish:

A lot of early adherents wanted both of this functions to come to Bitcoin core code. These are slowly coming into picture now with Schnorr Sigs, Rootstock and Simplicity. I wonder why RSK and Simplicity aren't talked more about on the forum.

However, Rootstock and Simplicity are two solutions offered by third parties: Rootstock is offered by rsk.com, while Simplicity is developed by Blockstream.

My question is the following: why such solution wasn't developed  by the Bitcoin Core team, this being a native Bitcoin upgrade (a BIP)? Third party solutions could work, as, for example, Lightning Network. But I think a native solution would be preferred instead of one created by a third party and, following Satoshi's own words, it seems that it is possible.

Therefore, why smart contract weren't developed by the core team which is developing Bitcoin?

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[gentlemand]

but for now the focus is on the basics of money and transactions. [...]

That's the answer that still applies.

There may be little to no uptake for contract stuff and it's a whole lot of work that may suck up a vast amount of time and energy with no guaranteed end goal. There's enough work to do refining Bitcoin itself.

If I were on the team I'd push for it to be someone else's problem, not ours.

[fiulpro]

I do think we should understand one thing that :

Even though there are possibilities of smart contracts in the Bitcoins ecosystem , they are not as developed , plus people don't want to opt for a third part solution since that would mean they would be compromising their privacy to an extent.
At the same time it's hard to design the smart contracts and it's considerably costly.

There are many altcoins which have an amazing developed smart contracts network.

For the people who really need smart contracts there are famous exchanges like KUCOIN providing the service for Crypto like BTC and ETH.

Therefore one can always opt for a third part solution and make the exchange more secure .


One can always go a step up and then use the normal blockchain protocol to make the contracts as mentioned in the following article:

https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/yes-bitcoin-can-do-smart-contracts-and-particl-demonstrates-how

The Bitcoin blockchain is not known for its ability to enable smart contracts. In fact, most developers creating smart contracts use a different blockchain, like Ethereum. But the truth is that the Bitcoin protocol can be used to create smart contracts.Oct 13, 2017

https://blockgeeks.com/guides/smart-contracts/
^ I found this amazing article on smart contracts if anyone wants to learn more about them.

[TheArchaeologist]

In order to implement smart-contracts you would probably need a scripting language that is Turing-complete. Bitcoin as of current uses a stack-based scripting language that is not Turing complete, for instance looping is not possible. Security wise this is a very good choice since it prevents infinite loops in a script that could lock up every single node when processing the script.

So in order to to fully support Smart contracts the scripting language of Bitcoin should be changed. But even then there's the difficulty of truly understanding what a script can do (see the DAO-fail on ETH) and a way of preventing infinite loops (like using Gas on ETH).

[pooya87]

bitcoin already has smart contracts but it doesn't have them in the way some people want and will never have it that way simply because of the same reason why your car for example doesn't have a cooking oven inside of it. it is not designed to have that option even though it could be added!
bitcoin is meant to be used as a payment system the same way your car is made for transportation.

besides, take a look at ethereum that is advertised as the "smart contract platform" and has existed for 5 years. all this time with thousands of "smart contracts" we still haven't seen a single useful one to this day.

My question is the following: why such solution wasn't developed  by the Bitcoin Core team, this being a native Bitcoin upgrade (a BIP)? Third party solutions could work, as, for example, Lightning Network. But I think a native solution would be preferred instead of one created by a third party and, following Satoshi's own words, it seems that it is possible.

Therefore, why smart contract weren't developed by the core team which is developing Bitcoin?

i hope you realize that "bitcoin core team" do not own Bitcoin protocol. referring to other work as "third party" makes no sense.

[Kakmakr]

I think most developers just focused on Bitcoin's primary function, namely being a currency and also fighting off the hostile forks. Then suddenly the ICO's burst on the scene and every Tom Dick & Harry started to develop ICO's on Ethereum and people thought Ethereum is best suited for Smart Contracts. So Bitcoin developer accepted that and just kept on developing off-chain solutions for Bitcoin (BTC) like the Lightning Network.

Ethereum was supposed to be the platform/technology for Smart contracts but it quickly shifted focus, when Bitcoin (BTC) and BCash was at war... so the Smart contracts was not their primary goal anymore... they wanted to be the Bitcoin (BTC) killer.  

[davis196]

Can you mention a purpose or function,that would make creation of Bitcoin Smart contracts needed?
Can you mention a problem inside Bitcoin Core,that could be solved with smart contract?
Smart contracts are simply a buzz term,just like many people consider blockchain technology to be a buzz term.It's cool,new and innovative technology,but can it solve a particular problem?Maybe,or maybe not.
Will Bitcoin smart contracts make Bitcoin Core better?Maybe,or maybe they simply aren't needed.

[aprilnot]

I think the reason is transaction fees. on bitcoin networks the fee is quite high compared to other blockchain networks such as ethereum, EOS, or TRON. so even though it was developed, surely many people would prefer another smartcontrac which costs cheaper. therefore they better not do that. they prefer to focus on the initial goal of making bitcoin a currency that can be accepted by everyone.

[20kevin20]

I have used Ethereum for a while and never have I touched a smart contract in my life. If there'll ever be demand for Bitcoin smart contracts, they'll exist - but for now, I don't think there is enough demand yet. Most shitcoins advertise themselves by talking about "smart contracts" just to bait newcomers, when in fact these contracts aren't even really used much.

[GazetaBitcoin]

but for now the focus is on the basics of money and transactions. [...]

That's the answer that still applies.

I was hoping that after 10 years, developers could also look over these contracts...

At the same time it's hard to design the smart contracts and it's considerably costly. [...]

For the people who really need smart contracts there are famous exchanges like KUCOIN providing the service for Crypto like BTC and ETH.

Therefore one can always opt for a third part solution and make the exchange more secure

There is nothing secure when you are using a centralized exchange. Besides, Bitcoin was designed to render third parties as irrelevant, not for using them. In case you don't know, these are Satoshi's words:

What is needed is an electronic payment system based on cryptographic proof instead of trust, allowing any two willing parties to transact directly with each other without the need for a trusted third party.  Transactions that are computationally impractical to reverse would protect sellers from fraud, and routine escrow mechanisms could easily be implemented to protect buyers.

The above quote also contradicts your allegation saying that is hard to design smart contracts. Coming back to third parties:

Commerce on the Internet has come to rely almost exclusively on financial institutions serving as trusted third parties to process electronic payments.  While the system works well enough for most transactions, it still suffers from the inherent weaknesses of the trust based model.

As a consequence, these third parties should not be used.

bitcoin already has smart contracts but it doesn't have them in the way some people want and will never have it that way simply because of the same reason why your car for example doesn't have a cooking oven inside of it. it is not designed to have that option even though it could be added! [...]

i hope you realize that "bitcoin core team" do not own Bitcoin protocol. referring to other work as "third party" makes no sense.

Well, that's a bit exaggerated I mean the car comparison. Cars were not designed to have ovens, but Bitcoin was created with the possibility of implementing these contracts. At least these were Satoshi's words...

Regarding the Bitcoin core team vs a third party team, by "core team" I meant the official developers of Bitcoin. Yes, they don't own it, but they are the official developers. Bitcoin has an open source, thus anyone can work on it, including that someone outside the core team can create smart contracts. But these are "third parties", not the core developers (such as Luke-jr, Greg Maxwell etc.).

Can you mention a purpose or function,that would make creation of Bitcoin Smart contracts needed?
Can you mention a problem inside Bitcoin Core,that could be solved with smart contract?

I am not sure if you joked or you were serious. I assume you were joking

From more technical side, some reason the community opposes smart contract on Bitcoin are :
1. High complexity, which could leads to bugs
2. Smart contract is only as smart as the creator
3. Increase node burden to store and verify the smart contract

Regarding 1, according to Satoshi, it wouldn't be too difficult... 2 and 3 are totally understandable.

[so98nn]

Oh man, thats so great to see Satoshi sir's communciation with the former colleagues. I mean it was so good that those were the lucky people who worked with the smartest guy behind blockchain technology. It's pretty good to see how professional he was.

However, coming to the topic I believe it's limited supply and inability of the bitcoin to provide these infinite amount could be one of the reason as compared to ETH where its infinite and smart contracts can just consume more of the coins. It's network is lightening fast and on the other hand bitcoin will end up with heavy congestion in the network right after few contracts and coins are released based on it's nodes. Any thoughts are welcome on this one.

[Vatimins]

     As far as I can understand, even if there are existing smart contracts, they did not work out for a reason. And that maybe because the sole programming of bitcoin just isn't suited for smart contracts to prosper. If the developers really wanted it to work, it would have been better if they did something about it in the past. But today, the process would be painstakingly difficult and long. Plus a bunch of people are using bitcoins already. Not to mention that the entirety of this industry is heavily reliant on bitcoins since when the price of it rises or falls, every other crypto currency follows.

     And so, I think that it would be hest that bitcoin never bothers with smart contracts and just focus on improving its efficiency to better itself for the users and for the survival of this industry. We already have etherium anyways. Plus if some people really want to make a currency that can generate smart contracts that give great amounts of privacy, they can create one of their own and see if it thrives.

[Ucy]

Perhaps satoshi being the architect behind Bitcoin and a creator who understands how things can be built on the network, has the goal to develop such feature in the future but the dream dissappeared with him. He probably left suddenly and didn't leave all/most of his ideas and plans to other members to achieve.

[d5000]

Smart Contracts do exist on Bitcoin, only not the turing-complete ones that are characteristic for the Ethereum blockchain.The Lightning Network, for example, is based on a kind of smart contracts. The same applies to other hash/time locked contracts, like Atomic Swaps.

For more complex applications, in the medium to long term, Simplicity could be added to Bitcoin. It's open source, not a "closed" third party solution. It's not Turing complete, but it would make the Bitcoin Script language a bit more "generalistic" and "self-extensible" (as Adam Back wrote), so there would be no need anymore to add a new opcode for every new language feature.

In this thread about Simplicity, gmaxwell has described it as "a much better direction for underlying systems for smart contract than other development we've seen". While he wrote that speculation about an implementation to BTC is "extremely premature", he seems to be positive about it, so maybe in a couple of years it can be added.

However, the scalability problem would remain. It has to be seen which kinds of contract could run at least partly using off-chain mechanisms like Lightning. Or maybe a decentralized sidechain idea (not a federated one) becomes reality.

[hatshepsut93]

I'm happy that Bitcoin doesn't have smart contracts in the same way Ethereum does, they only create hype and unrealistic expectations for everyone in the community, while failing to solve any real-world problems. When Ethereum was first launched, it was touted as world's computer, the idea was that soon every device will turn IoT, that centralized services will be replaced by decentralized ones, and it will all be thanks to ETH, but now 5 years later Ethereum's biggest achievements are lotteries, collectible tokens, and ICO scams.

[GreatArkansas]

I also want to as guys if there is a smart contract on Bitcoin like what Ethereum have, is there any possibilities that the network of Bitcoin will be more clogged, and the transaction fees could be higher and more transactions there?
Because as what I saw and heard on Ethereum, they are also experiencing the high transaction fees due to a lot of transactions with smart contracts for sure.

[idev]

Counterparty was probably the closest thing to having smart contracts implemented with bitcoin, if i remember correctly their EVM was compatible with ethereum so one could deploy the same solidity contracts with a bit of tweaking on Counterparty. I'm not sure how far along they got on with it tbh.

[pooya87]

Well, that's a bit exaggerated I mean the car comparison. Cars were not designed to have ovens, but Bitcoin was created with the possibility of implementing these contracts. At least these were Satoshi's words...

it already has smart contracts. for instance each time you create a multi-signature, locktime, conditional,... scripts you are creating a smart contract. these are all aligned with bitcoin's purpose of being a currency. adding more capabilities for people to create things like cryptokitties is neither wise nor accepted.

Regarding the Bitcoin core team vs a third party team, by "core team" I meant the official developers of Bitcoin. Yes, they don't own it, but they are the official developers. Bitcoin has an open source, thus anyone can work on it, including that someone outside the core team can create smart contracts. But these are "third parties", not the core developers (such as Luke-jr, Greg Maxwell etc.).

again there is no such thing as "official" either. bitcoin is not a company to have an official representative. by using these terms you are centralizing bitcoin.
bitcoin is simply a protocol that has many implementations with one reference one called bitcoin core that is developed by a team of contributors that has changed and will change in the future.

[hd49728]

I think most developers just focused on Bitcoin's primary function, namely being a currency and also fighting off the hostile forks. Then suddenly the ICO's burst on the scene and every Tom Dick & Harry started to develop ICO's on Ethereum and people thought Ethereum is best suited for Smart Contracts. So Bitcoin developer accepted that and just kept on developing off-chain solutions for Bitcoin (BTC) like the Lightning Network.

I agree that any new and supplementary features for Bitcoin should be developed off-chain. Confirmation time should be fast and not congested like on-chain. Lightning Network is promising and people expect on it too much but years passed and there is neither much adoption nor success on Lightning Network.

When people don't have something, they ask for it but when they have it, they don't actually care to use it for their daily lives. I see some users on the forum don't know what is Segwit address and how to choose a wallet, and get a Segwit address. More people use Segwit address for their transactions but not all of them, it is life. Some will accept new technology, some will do not.

[ABCbits]

From more technical side, some reason the community opposes smart contract on Bitcoin are :
1. High complexity, which could leads to bugs
2. Smart contract is only as smart as the creator
3. Increase node burden to store and verify the smart contract

Regarding 1, according to Satoshi, it wouldn't be too difficult... 2 and 3 are totally understandable.

Looking at ETH and various bugs related with smart contact, i would say otherwise.