I kept assuming Babylon's vault was "smart" in the way people mean when they compare Bitcoin to Ethereum. Spent time actually reading through TBV design and realized that's backwards.
the vault doesn't make decisions after your BTC is locked. it can't. before the taproot vault output ever goes live, every legitimate spending path, repayment, liquidation, challenge resolution, refund, is already constructed and pre-signed as a transaction graph. nothing gets improvised later. a hashlock controls when the vault activates, and a separate timelocked recovery path is the depositor's exit if setup never finishes.
that's the opposite of what smart contracts do. ethereum evaluates logic while a transaction executes. TBV moves all that logic into the setup stage instead, so bitcoin only ever has to enforce a small, fixed set of outcomes it already agreed to ahead of time.
I don't think that's a limitation, I think it might be the entire reason this can exist on bitcoin at all without needing bitcoin itself to change.
where I'm stuck is whether that holds at scale. narrow use cases with clean, predictable outcomes seem like an obvious fit.
but does the same pre-signed structure survive once the transaction graphs get bigger and more paths have to be accounted for in advance?
@BabylonLabs_io $BABY #baby
the vault doesn't make decisions after your BTC is locked. it can't. before the taproot vault output ever goes live, every legitimate spending path, repayment, liquidation, challenge resolution, refund, is already constructed and pre-signed as a transaction graph. nothing gets improvised later. a hashlock controls when the vault activates, and a separate timelocked recovery path is the depositor's exit if setup never finishes.
that's the opposite of what smart contracts do. ethereum evaluates logic while a transaction executes. TBV moves all that logic into the setup stage instead, so bitcoin only ever has to enforce a small, fixed set of outcomes it already agreed to ahead of time.
I don't think that's a limitation, I think it might be the entire reason this can exist on bitcoin at all without needing bitcoin itself to change.
where I'm stuck is whether that holds at scale. narrow use cases with clean, predictable outcomes seem like an obvious fit.
but does the same pre-signed structure survive once the transaction graphs get bigger and more paths have to be accounted for in advance?
@BabylonLabs_io $BABY #baby