Bitcoin-Native Superpowers

Written By zbam

Last updated 12 days ago

By leveraging Bitcoin as the base layer, smart contracts gain abilities that are impossible or impractical on Ethereum or other EVM chains. These “superpowers” let developers build Bitcoin-native dApps with deep protocol awareness.

Transaction Introspection

Contracts can inspect Bitcoin transactions directly via precompiled contracts. This allows you to:

  • Verify that a user sent a specific UTXO or satoshis before executing logic

  • Build token bonding curves pegged to Bitcoin flows

  • Enforce custom asset entry conditions without relying on off-chain bridges

Effectively, contracts can reason about the Bitcoin ledger itself.

Satoshi Location

Contracts can determine the exact location of a satoshi within a transaction output. This enables:

  • Precision tracking of scarce or ordinalized satoshis

  • Conditional execution based on which satoshi or output a user controls

  • Novel NFT-like use cases tied directly to individual satoshis

This level of granularity is impossible on Ethereum, where native assets are fungible and abstracted.

Timelock Script Generation

Contracts can generate Bitcoin timelock scripts programmatically:

  • Enforce time- or height-based release of funds

  • Build vaults, escrows, and delayed payouts without any external oracle

  • Combine with on-chain contract logic for hybrid BTC+EVM workflows

These scripts are fully compatible with Bitcoin, meaning users can move funds in and out without leaving the Bitcoin security model.

Examples of What Ethereum Cannot Do

  1. Ordinalized Asset Control: Track specific satoshis, not just fungible balances.

  2. BTC-Backed AMMs and Bonding Curves: Accept and reason about raw Bitcoin inputs natively, without wrapping or trust intermediaries.

  3. Hybrid Contracts: Combine EVM logic with Bitcoin timelocked ordinals, UTXO proofs, or ordinals in a single execution.

  4. Fully On-Chain Settlement: Exit BRC20 tokens back to Bitcoin directly, with no bridge or multisig dependency.

In short: these superpowers let you write contracts that are both EVM-native and Bitcoin-native, opening a class of applications that simply cannot exist on Ethereum alone.