New Clarity Functions (Bitcoin-related)

[setzeus]

As discussed during last weeks ClarityWG, the ability to 'read' a Bitcoin transaction is quite limited in Clarity. Currently, developers use the Bitcoin-Clarity-v5.clar contract to:

• verify a legacy transaction was mined in a block
• verify a segwit transaction was mined in a block
• parse inputs & outputs

An idea was floated (though it's certainly been mentioned many times before) to create a new set of Clarity functions that specifically help read Bitcoin state. This discussion is meant as a starting point for that research.

I'm tagging all participants who were there during the CWG meeting and/or have mentioned the idea beforehand: @friedger @obycode @djordon @dylanft @MarvinJanssen

[Rapha-btc]

Thanks for initiating this discussion. Adding int-to-buff function would be valuable to make handling BTC transaction data easier.

[obycode]

Adding int-to-buff function would be valuable to make handling BTC transaction data easier.

@jbencin also recently suggested adding new conversion functions as well. See clarity-lang/reference#81 for example (note that repo is where we've been collecting ideas for Clarity upgrades). These conversions can definitely be included in the next Clarity version.

[friedger]

Relevant issue at clarity-lang/reference: clarity-lang/reference#71