ChainCatcher news, Udi Wertheimer, the advocate of OP_CAT and co-founder of Taproot Wizards, announced the upcoming launch of a new Bitcoin-native token protocol called CATNIP, based on OP_CAT recursive contracts.CATNIP allows the market to execute partial fill orders, enabling users to purchase the desired amount of tokens without needing to pre-split UTXOs. It allows for bidding, where users can specify that they want to buy a certain amount of CATNIP at a specific BTC price, and then let one or more sellers complete the transaction. As a result, the protocol will even allow for on-chain L1 AMM and liquidity pools. Due to Bitcoin's slow blocks and other issues related to transaction relay strategies, Udi believes that L1 AMM will not provide a good experience, but CATNIP will also allow for fast and secure off-chain AMM (for example, using CatVM).It is reported that CATNIP is under development and testing, and the team will launch the protocol when OP_CAT goes live on the Bitcoin mainnet.

ChainCatcher news, Fractal Bitcoin announced on X that its testnet phase reset has been completed, and the public testnet is officially launched. Meanwhile, Fractal nodes are now open source, and OP_CAT has been successfully activated.

ChainCatcher news, UniSat founder and CEO Lorenzo stated on social media that rapid progress has been made in the implementation of smart contracts and cross-chain bridges. In terms of smart contracts, Fractal launched OP_CAT in the testnet reset today and plans to activate it on the mainnet starting September 1. Regarding cross-chain bridges, 3 to 5 methods for transferring assets from the Bitcoin mainnet to Fractal are under development.

ChainCatcher news, OP_CAT supporter and Taproot Wizards CEO Udi Wertheimer stated during an appearance on the Xverse podcast that the probability of OP_CAT being activated is "close to 100%."It is reported that the OP_CAT feature was proposed by Ethan Heilman and Armin Sabouri last October, recently launched on the Bitcoin test network Signet, and assigned the BIP-420 number, indicating that the ecosystem is seriously considering an upgrade.In addition, many well-known figures in the crypto industry, including Solana Labs co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko, have added "BIP-420" to their usernames on the X platform to show support for this upgrade. Taproot Wizards launched the Quantum Cat Ordinals series in February to promote OP_CAT. In April, Taproot Wizards released a white paper outlining a framework for building applications using OP_CAT.

ChainCatcher news, Bitcoin Core developer Peter Todd posted on platform X that Starknet's foray into Bitcoin's scaling layer is a good reason to oppose enabling OP_CAT. Starknet could bring destructive MEV shenanigans to Bitcoin, just like Ethereum, and pouring large amounts of funds into the nascent STARKS is unreliable; Eli's Zcash has repeatedly (maliciously) exploited token inflation.

ChainCatcher news, as efforts to add new features through software upgrade code continue to advance, the reputation of the Bitcoin chain as the primary network supporting digital gold may change. OP_CAT supporter and Taproot Wizards CEO Udi Wertheimer stated in an interview, "In fact, you can execute smart contracts on the Bitcoin chain that are very similar to those on other chains. Bitcoin can become more powerful. It's time to discuss actual technical upgrades."The OP_CAT feature was proposed by Ethan Heilman and Armin Sabouri in October, recently launched on the Bitcoin test network Signet, and assigned the BIP-420 number, indicating that the ecosystem is seriously considering an upgrade.Many well-known figures in the crypto industry, including Solana Labs co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko, have added "BIP-420" to their usernames on the X platform. Taproot Wizards launched the Quantum Cats Ordinals series in February to promote OP_CAT. In April, Taproot Wizards released a white paper outlining the framework for building applications using OP_CAT.

ChainCatcher news, Udi Wertheimer, the advocate of OP_CAT and co-founder of Taproot Wizards, stated that OP_CAT (also known as BIP-420) has gone live on Bitcoin's official testnet "SIGNET." This will allow developers to utilize CatVM to build advanced OP_CAT applications and test them in real-time on the official test network.It is reported that Bitcoin Signet is a test network designed for developers, allowing them to create a block approximately every 10 minutes for software testing without miners and without proof of work. Signet is characterized by the requirement that each block must contain evidence (such as a signature) proving that the creation of the block has been approved by a trusted authority.

ChainCatcher news, OP_CAT (i.e., BIP-420) is scheduled to go live on the Bitcoin Signet testnet at block height 193,536 (expected next Tuesday).It is reported that Signet is a Bitcoin test network designed for developers to test software, with no miners and no proof of work, creating a block approximately every 10 minutes.ChainCatcher previously reported that, according to The Block, the Bitcoin Improvement Proposal BIP-420 has officially proposed to restore the OP_CAT opcode to introduce the "covenants" feature on Bitcoin. OP_CAT advocate and Taproot Wizards co-founder Udi Wertheimer stated that OP_CAT will enable functionalities such as smart contracts, secure cross-chain bridges, on-chain transactions, and zero-knowledge proof verification on Bitcoin.

ChainCatcher news, according to The Block, the Bitcoin Improvement Proposal BIP-420 has officially proposed the restoration of the OP_CAT opcode to introduce the "Covenants" feature on Bitcoin. Udi Wertheimer, co-founder of Taproot Wizards and advocate for OP_CAT, stated that OP_CAT will enable functionalities such as smart contracts, secure cross-chain bridges, on-chain transactions, and zero-knowledge proof verification on Bitcoin.The so-called "Covenants" is an advanced scripting feature that allows specific conditions to be set for the use of Bitcoin in future transactions. This will open up numerous application scenarios, such as creating secure "vaults" that allow transaction rollbacks, automating regular payments, setting timed transfers for inheritance scenarios, and complex financial instruments like escrow and bonds.It is reported that the proposal was written by Ethan Heilman and Armin Sabouri, aiming to redefine the opcode OP_SUCCESS126 in a backward-compatible manner through a soft fork to restore OP_CAT. However, whether the OP_CAT soft fork can be realized depends on multiple considerations, including technical, security, and community consensus.The concept of Bitcoin "Covenants" can be traced back at least to 2013. In addition to OP_CAT, there are several other "Covenants" proposals, such as CTV, CSFS, and LNHANCE, which are currently at different stages of research and discussion.