Builder: Stu
Language (s): oxide
Contributes to: CTV prototypes, network char
Work (s/ed) in: ZBD
Before Bitcoin, Stu spent his days working as administrator of the Windows system and in IT support. His routine consisted of long days bored of sitting in a chair that participated in monotonous maintenance work, reconfiguration of systems and password restoration for users who had forgotten them.
It was the type of work in which a problem that happens that really requires that you understand your attention in a significant way is such a rare occurrence that you end up waiting for something like this to happen most of the time.
Stu spent most of the days only navigating Reddit’s threads during their abundant amounts of inactivity time. But this turned out to be such a bad scenario at the end, since this was how Stu found himself in the Bitcoin space around 2017.
Like many bitcoiners, or rather that Bitcoiners will soon be, in that period, Stu was absorbed by the initial supply of currencies (ICO) and the Altcoin frenzy of the time. In addition, like many Bitcoiners at that time, it ended up being financially burned for some bad investments in unknown random projects in which it probably should not have invested first.
Inevitably, Bitcoin’s severity knocked him down the proverbial burrow of the rabbit.
After a few years of learning more deeply about Bitcoin, Stu reached a period of frenzy and resigned from his work at the top of the 2021 upward market to find opportunities to work in the Bitcoin space. By then, programming language oxide had been widely used in different Bitcoin projects and libraries, so Stu began learning it to contribute to Bitcoin.
By the end of 2022, his search for work in space ended when Michael Tildwell hired him to work on ZBDA company that integrates Bitcoin payments into video games using the Lightning Network.
Working in ZBD
Stu worked Devops in ZBD, but in his free time he continued working for Prototype Rust Projects.
“Most of my parallel projects are related to what interested me at that time, since I was working in ZBD, I began to make games that could use Bitcoin,” Stu told Bitcoin magazine.
To start, he built a multiplayer web game, rain.Based on players who collect rays for rewards in Satoshis, to become more familiar with the construction of applications that have to talk to each other in a network. Then built a simple Connect4 Game played on the Nostr protocol.
“[This] It was an excellent way to learn how Nostr worked, ”said Stu.
“I attended BTC ++ in Austin in 2024, which was the script edition.” The four -day conference was the densest forum for discussion on Bitcoin’s improvements and script agreements in the last year or so.
“There seemed, at that time, some type of development consensus for Bitcoin agreements,” Stu recalled.
“This made me really interested in how Bitcoin’s script worked and [led] To experiment with Taproot and Bitcoin scripts … “he added.
“I really didn’t end much, but it was an excellent way to learn how scripts worked.”
Tabconf, payments and CTV pogses
In 2024, Stu attended Tabconf, another conference centered on the developer, which is held annually in Atlanta, Georgia. The conversations in Atlanta also revolved a lot around the agreements.
Like all conferences focused on the developer, Tabconf put on a hackathon. Stu chose to build a project Use of discreet Registration Contracts (DLC), which allowed users to bet on the result of chess coincidences. It became very obvious for Stu to build software around a large number of large amounts of transactions introduced great complexity for developers.
Discussing this issue, he said: “The answer to this problem seemed to be Checktemppllingify (CTV). As I wanted to learn more about the agreements, CTV seemed like a good place to start, so I began to integrate CTV into my chess project DLC. I couldn’t believe how simple it did everything …”
Stu went on to build a proof of concept prototype of a group of payments using CTV. Payment groups are a very basic layer 2 system where groups of greater than two share control over a single outstanding of Bitcoin not spent.
“One way in which we can climb Bitcoin so that everyone, all, without using centralized third parties, is that users share those of Utxo,” he said when asked why he decided to work in a concept test for a group of payments. “Payment groups are an excellent way to do this, especially along with other layer 2 solutions, such as Lightning or Ark.”
Agreement
The agreements have become a controversial issue in the discussion about where to take Bitcoin in the future. Each developer has their personal opinion about them, and Stu is no exception.
“I think that using the agreements to replace transactions prior to the signed is a surprising improvement for developers to build faster and safer,” he said. “It eliminates a lot of interactivity and friction for users, so there is less need for them to be online or coordinate with other parts, which can improve user experience in large part.”
I asked him if this is what attracted him to building tests of concepts and prototypes used CTV instead of other pact proposals.
“I was attracted to CTV because I was very simple to implement in the applications I wanted to build. Once I built the group of payments with CTV, I was planning to do the same for all the proposals of the pact. I discovered how to obtain exactly the same functionality with CAT, but it only took a long time to work and add more code. The Bitcoin script was like 50 lines of code, compared to CTV with CTV with the 3 lines.”
“I am quite sure that there is a consensus among the protocol developers that there is no risk for Bitcoin if we enable CTV …”, he said. “… So the argument now seems that users do not want it. But users are already using applications and protocols such as Lightning and Vaults Multisig that CTV would improve.
When asked about the current contentious nature of the discussion about the agreements and the following soft bifurcation, and how the atmosphere could be improved, it had to say:
“Someone needs Saylor to tweet a sandwich emoji and everything will be fine.”
“But seriously, I really don’t know. Maybe more in events in person where people can argue face to face.
“I think part of the hesitation is more about to make any change in Bitcoin. The reason it is so difficult to change is an incredible property of Bitcoin, but it does not have to spread to the soft forks. Change,” he said.
The future
Stu recently participated in the Bitcoin open source (BOS) software program by Chaincode Labs, a program designed as a way for new developers in the bitcoin ecosystem to cut their teeth and quickly develop a deeper understanding and experience with the construction of Bitcoin.
In the future, Stu will contribute to Char Network, a little out of the radar effort to build a new Bitcoin Asta platform directed by Jeremy Rubin, the developer who designed and proposed CTV. He plans to continue working on his personal lateral projects and contribute to open source projects also, with the eventual objective to start contributing to Bitcoin Core.
Stu had to say about Bitcoiners’ priorities in the future:
“Our number one approach should be to improve personal custody. It really stinks at this time, and I think that more bitcoiners in general need to admit that. The support of 12 words sounds simple, but it really is not so easy, and nobody is doing it.”
