Wu's April Technical Monthly Report: Bitcoin Introduces "Contracts" Discussion, Pectra Mainnet Upgrade Schedule Confirmed, Solana Block Space Expansion, and More
Powered by ChatGPTWu Shuo team summarizes important developments in the blockchain technology field for April.
Editor | GaryMa Wu Shuo Blockchain
Wu Shuo team summarizes important developments in the blockchain technology field for April:
· Discussion on Bitcoin's quantum-resistant theft prevention scheme:
After implementing quantum resistance upgrades and giving users enough time to migrate, destroy bitcoins vulnerable to quantum attacks.
Prove UTXO control through SHA256 (or other quantum-resistant commitments) preimages.
A BIP draft was submitted proposing multiple schemes to destroy bitcoins vulnerable to quantum attacks, emphasizing protection of Bitcoin’s long-term security through enforced migration deadlines.
· The Bitcoin community held extensive discussions on introducing OP_CHECKTEMPLATEVERIFY (CTV) and OP_CHECKSIGFROMSTACK (CSFS) opcodes via soft fork, covering motivations, technical implementation, tooling support, alternatives, and potential applications.
Support for CTV+CSFS: Highlighted optimization potential for DLC, vaults, BitVM, LN-Symmetry, Ark, and Liquid; CTV is especially critical for Ark.
Criticism and caution: Questioned CTV’s motivation (recursive contract contradictions), tooling readiness, DLC/BitVM demand; advocated alternative languages (bll, Simplicity).
Technical supplements: CCV provides contract transfer support; tools like Minsc are being improved.
Consensus cleanup: Fixed multiple vulnerabilities, but the 64-byte transaction ban and coinbase locktime flags sparked controversy.
· Pectra mainnet upgrade scheduled around May 7, 10:05 UTC / Epoch 364032.
· Vitalik proposed a long-term plan in the Ethereum Magicians community to replace the current execution layer virtual machine (EVM) with an open-source RISC-V instruction set architecture.
· Ethereum developers decided to remove EOF from the Fusaka upgrade. (See Fusaka Meta EIP, which includes/considers related EIPs in the upgrade.)
· Anza report on a vulnerability in Solana Virtual Machine (SVM) ed25519 and secp256k1 precompiled programs affecting validator nodes running version 2.2 with the transaction-structure view enabled. The vulnerability was reported by Temporal on April 9; Anza released v2.2.8 on April 11 to fix it by removing alignment assumptions. The vulnerability does not affect fund security. Anza recommends disabling the transaction-structure view and upgrading to the patched version.
· Anza’s VP of Core Engineering stated in a podcast plans to double Solana’s block space by the end of this year, reaching a 100 million CU block limit. Related proposals include SIMD-0207 and SIMD-0256. SIMD-0207 proposes raising the block limit to 50 million CU and has been activated on mainnet. SIMD-0256 plans to raise it further to 60 million CU and is under review.
· Solana’s early “Confidential Transfers” feature has now expanded to “Confidential Balances.” This feature covers confidential transfers, fees, minting, and burning modules. A Rust-based backend implementation is available, with a JavaScript zero-knowledge proof library expected to launch in 2025.
Users will be able to generate and verify proofs through browsers or mobile wallets to achieve client-side confidential transfers.BNB Chain
· BNB Chain has successfully completed the Lorentz mainnet hard fork upgrade. This upgrade reduced the block time of opBNB to 0.5 seconds, and BSC to 1.5 seconds. Subsequently, the Maxwell upgrade in June 2025 will further reduce the BSC mainnet block time to 0.75 seconds.
Near
· The NEAR Infrastructure Committee issued a Request for Proposal (RFP) aimed at building a chain-abstracted relayer infrastructure. This self-service platform will enable developers to seamlessly sponsor gas fees or allow users to pay transaction fees across multiple blockchains themselves, accepting base tokens (such as $ETH, $SOL) and mainstream stablecoins (USDT/USDC) as gas deposits.
Hyperliquid
· HyperEVM mainnet launched the Read precompiles feature. Read precompiles is one of HyperEVM’s core functions, allowing smart contracts to atomically and efficiently read on-chain state from HyperCore (such as prices and order book data). It eliminates reliance on external oracles, enhancing DeFi application reliability, performance, and innovation capabilities. Through read precompiles, the Hyperliquid blockchain seamlessly combines high-performance financial primitives with a general EVM programming environment, providing developers with powerful tools to build the next generation of DeFi applications.
Others
· Category Labs tweeted introducing MonadBFT, a future consensus protocol designed for Monad. MonadBFT is optimized based on the HotStuff protocol, integrating hybrid signature schemes and pipeline design, demonstrating excellent performance and scalability. Through features such as tail fork resistance, single-round speculative finality, optimistic responsiveness, and linear complexity, it achieves high throughput (10 thousand tx/s), sub-second finality, and network stability. Its core innovation lies in protecting honest validators’ work via a forced re-proposal mechanism, curbing malicious MEV extraction, and enhancing user experience.
· Researchers proposed a hybrid privacy address protocol that combines the Curvy protocol and Module-LWE technology, achieving higher scanning efficiency than existing solutions while maintaining Ethereum compatibility.
· Researchers proposed the Trusted Compute Units (TCU) framework, combining Trusted Execution Environments (TEE) and zero-knowledge virtual machines (zkVM) to achieve verifiability and privacy protection for off-chain complex computations, suitable for scenarios such as federated learning.
· Scroll became the first zk-Rollup to reach Stage 1 status. This upgrade introduced key improvements through the Euclid update: 1) prohibition of arbitrary upgrades, allowing users sufficient time to exit before system changes; 2) elimination of censorship risk by enabling users to submit transactions directly on Layer 1 with enforced execution; 3) ensuring network liveness by automatically opening the network to everyone if sequencers or provers go offline, maintaining system operation. The Bitcoin community held extensive discussions about introducing OP_CHECKTEMPLATEVERIFY (CTV) and OP_CHECKSIGFROMSTACK (CSFS) opcodes via soft forks, covering motivations, technical implementation, tool support, alternatives, and potential applications.