Computing on Bitcoin #78
February 27, 2026 - Week 09
Welcome to a new edition of Computing on Bitcoin News, where we highlight the most relevant technical developments expanding Bitcoin’s computational frontier. Each week, we curate research, proposals, and discussions shaping the next generation of Bitcoin-native innovation.
Let's dive in.
Robin Linus introduces Binohash: Transaction Introspection Without Softforks, with a first on-chain transaction demonstrating limited covenant-style behavior using existing Bitcoin script.
robinlinus.com
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Binohash: Transaction Introspection Without Softforks
We present Binohash, a collision-resistant hash function for Bitcoin Script that enables limited transaction introspection without consensus changes. By exploiting the FindAndDelete quirk in legacy OP_CHECKMULTISIG combined with proof-of-work signature grinding, Binohash creates a transaction digest directly readable in Script.
Fairgate's paper “WISCH: Efficient Data Signing via Correlated Signatures” will be presented at WTSC @ Financial Cryptography 2026.
WISCH introduces a new protocol for efficient data authentication based on correlated signatures.
fairgate.io/publications
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WISCH: Efficient Data Signing via Correlated Signatures
We introduce WISCH, a protocol that generates correlated sets of signatures across different signing schemes or messages. By exploiting this correlation, WISCH can serve as a drop-in replacement for existing schemes, reducing on-chain signing costs by at least 5× compared to Winternitz and 10× compared to Lamport and GC Wire labels.
A new Delving Bitcoin post introduces Bitcoin PIPEs v2, a cryptographic approach to covenants and ZK-gated spending on L1 using witness encryption. The proposal also shows how PIPEs could compress and simplify BitVM-style dispute flows while keeping Bitcoin’s consensus unchanged.
delvingbitcoin.org
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Bitcoin PIPEs v2: Covenants and ZKPs on the Bitcoin L1 via Witness Encryption
Bitcoin’s transaction validation model is intentionally minimal. At the consensus layer, Bitcoin verifies only that a transaction correctly spends unspent outputs and that each input is authorized by a valid digital signature. This simplicity is a defining strength: it keeps consensus rules stable, auditability high, and the security model well understood. At the same time, it places hard limits on the kinds of spending policies that can be enforced directly on-chain.
DL Research interviews the OP_NET founders, who argue Bitcoin needs native L1 smart contracts to sustain its long-term security model. They contrast their Taproot-based design with approaches like BitVM and rollups.
dlnews.com
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OP_NET founders on why Bitcoin needs smart contracts to survive
Frederic Fosco, involved in Bitcoin since 2013, and Samuel Patt, a long-standing enthusiast with a background in crypto trading, launched OP_NET to address a specific problem: the lack of native programmability on the world’s most secure blockchain.
ETHDenver spotlights Robin Linus’ talk, “BitVM3: Are Garbled Circuits the Key to Scale?
BITVM3: Are Garbled Circuits the Key to Scale? | Robin Linus - ZeroSync
youtube.com/@ETHDenver
We're already hard at work preparing for next year's biggest Web3 event!
Keep your eyes peeled for more info on ETHDenver 2026—it’s going to be epic!
The pace of research and experimentation across the Bitcoin ecosystem continues to accelerate, and the design space for Bitcoin-native computation keeps expanding.
We’ll continue tracking the ideas shaping the future.
See you next week!
-The Fairgate Team