Compiler making Bitcoin Script more enterprise-ready

Interested in writing serious, enterprise-grade smart contracts for a truly scalable blockchain? BSV is the answer. But what if you don’t want to hand-code Bitcoin Script opcodes? BSV now has the answer to that as well. It’s the “Rúnar” compiler, which takes code in six different languages and turns it into an identical, fully functional Bitcoin Script.

Rúnar was developed by BSV Association Teranode Director Siggi Óskarsson. It will appeal to developers building infrastructure to survive intense environments. They’ll handle billions of dollars in value, moving through complex processes at high speed. In these situations, stability and security are essential, and the scripting code must be precise, whatever language it’s originally written in.

Rúnar unlocks the power of Bitcoin smart contracts for any developer working with TypeScript, Go, Rust, or Python. It’ll also compile code written in Solidity-like and Move-style languages, offering a new BSV on-ramp to devs on other blockchain networks and who’d like to see how their existing contract formats run in BSV’s friction-free environment.

It comes with 16 built-in example contracts, covering different kinds of payment authorizations ;and tokens, stateful state machines, integrations with oracles, provably fair games, and zero-knowledge proofs (ZKPs).

These can include both “stateless” and “stateful” smart contracts. A stateless contract has read-only properties that release transactions based on binary true/false conditions. Stateful contracts must persist across multiple transactions (like auctions, games, and tokens). Rúnar’s compiler ensures all the right (verifiable) data is forwarded, letting developers write only the business logic.

At press time the current version is 0.2, with v0.3 expected shortly. “Things are moving very fast,” Óskarsson said, noting the project is still in heavy development. Explaining Rúnar in an article posted on X, Óskarsson said:

“Bitcoin Script is the most battle-tested programmable money on earth. But writing it directly is like writing x86 assembly for a banking system. You can do it. You probably shouldn’t.”

The name “Rúnar” comes from Old Norse for “runes,” or secret scripts, which is an apt description for a tool that unlocks Bitcoin’s programmable capabilities.

For projects where ‘good enough’ isn’t good enough

When your smart contract needs to move real-world value at scale, “good enough” isn’t good enough. Rúnar is to Bitcoin Script what the aerospace industry is to flight control software: multiple independent implementations, formal conformance suites, and zero tolerance for ambiguity.

The compiler implementations for TypeScript, Rust, Python, and Go are fully independent of each other, with the idea that all three must produce byte-identical output for the same input. It needs to run live on the BSV mainnet, using only existing opcodes.

Suppose you’re developing a contract-based system for a large enterprise/government project, and need it to survive a (so-far theoretical) quantum computer attack in the future. There’s built-in verification for two post-quantum signature schemes—WOTS+ and SLH-DSA (FIPS 205/SPHINCS+), letting you create a quantum-resistant wallet that compiles to 10KB of Bitcoin Script with just four lines of code.

Rúnar’s formal conformance suite includes 10 golden-file tests, Óskarsson said, which include post-quantum signature schemes and elliptic-curve operations.

“The conformance boundary is defined at the ANF (Administrative Normal Form) intermediate representation. Every sub-expression gets a named temporary. No ambiguity. Canonical JSON serialization per RFC 8785. If all three compilers produce the same bytes, the probability of a shared correctness bug drops dramatically.”

Only BSV blockchain has the full list of enabled opcodes, enabling sophisticated contracts to run. And only BSV’s network has the speed and capacity to handle the type of transaction volumes large-scale enterprise projects require. Bitcoin Script is powerful, and always has been, but a solid compiler means there’s no longer a steep learning curve to unlocking its potential, whatever your native language.

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