Adam Back Advocates for Covenant Opcodes as Potential Final Bitcoin Soft-Fork

Blockstream co-founder and CEO Adam Back has endorsed covenant opcodes as a potential "last soft-fork" for the Bitcoin network. Back argues that implementing these tools could enhance Bitcoin Script security through formal semantics and mathematical proofs while reducing the need for frequent, contentious protocol upgrades. Covenants would allow for rules that restrict how coins are spent in the future, moving beyond current spending authorization checks. Proposals such as CTV (BIP 119) and OP_CAT (BIP 347) are currently being tested on signet but have not yet reached the Bitcoin mainnet.