A proposal now open in the Bitcoin Core repository would give the network's scripts something they have never had: a memory. The framework behind it, known as MATT (Merkleize All The Things), enables stateful contracts and scalable fraud proofs on Bitcoin's base layer, and its most direct implementation runs through the OP_CCV opcode set out in Bitcoin Core pull request #32080. The development was reported by COINOTAG on November 11, 2026.

What MATT Is Designed to Do

Bitcoin's existing scripting language evaluates each transaction input on its own, with no built-in mechanism for a script to dictate how those coins may be spent afterward. MATT, first outlined by developer Salvatore Ingala on the Bitcoin-Dev mailing list in late 2022, targets exactly that gap: its goal is to let Bitcoin scripts carry state across transactions — in effect, giving contracts a memory — with only a minimal addition to the scripting language. Constructions of this kind, commonly called covenants, restrict how a coin may be spent in future transactions and enable designs such as vaults and other self-enforcing spending rules, in which recovery and spending conditions are attached directly to the coins themselves.

Covenant-style proposals have circulated in the Bitcoin community for years, and MATT joins related efforts such as OP_CHECKTEMPLATEVERIFY (OP_CTV), proposed by developer Jeremy Rubin, in seeking to extend what the base layer can express.

Fraud Proofs and Verification on the Base Layer

A second aim of the framework is scalable fraud proofs: verification schemes in which an off-chain computation is checked on-chain only when a challenge is raised, rather than being re-executed in full — a pattern used, for example, in optimistic rollup designs on other platforms, where computation happens off-chain and only disputed results require base-layer scrutiny. Because verification effort is tied to challenges rather than to the size of the computation itself, such schemes are described as scalable. In the MATT design, this verification is intended to run directly on Bitcoin's base layer, with OP_CCV (short for OP_CHECKCONTRACTVERIFY) serving as the core opcode for enforcing contract logic.

Review, Not Activation

Consensus-affecting changes to Bitcoin advance through public pull requests in the Bitcoin Core GitHub repository, where technical review and testing typically run for extended periods. Because Bitcoin's consensus rules are ultimately enforced by the operators of full nodes across the network, a favorable code review is only one step; broad adoption by the wider ecosystem is what turns a proposed change into an active network rule. Bitcoin's most recent consensus upgrade, Taproot, was activated in November 2021 after a multi-year process, a trajectory that illustrates how long such efforts can run. Pull request #32080, like all such proposals, would require extensive review and broad community agreement before any activation could be considered; the source report states no timeline. Its public review thread on GitHub, where contributors' technical comments and revisions accumulate, offers a direct way to follow whether the proposal advances.

This content was first published on COINOTAG: https://en.coinotag.com/matt-op-ccv-bitcoin-covenant-pull-request-32080