SPV verification

How BATHRON sees Bitcoin without an oracle — the machinery behind Bitcoin facts inside consensus.

The header database

Bitcoin headers enter via TX_BTC_HEADERS transactions and live in a consensus-maintained database. Every node validates, per header: proof-of-work against the encoded target, the difficulty adjustment schedule, timestamp rules, and accumulated chainwork. Anyone can submit headers; invalid ones are consensus-rejected.

Following the real chain

• Reorgs are handled by chainwork, like a Bitcoin node: a heavier branch replaces a lighter one, with full undo support.
• Canonical checkpoints: headers at fixed anchor heights must match pinned hashes of the real Bitcoin chain — a from-scratch fake chain, even a well-formed one, cannot be grafted in.
• A reorg floor: no reorg is accepted below a pinned checkpoint or below a burn that has already minted — an accepted burn cannot be un-happened.

Proving a transaction

A Bitcoin transaction is proven with a Merkle branch to a block header in the database, plus a burial requirement (confirmations of chainwork on top). Verification is pure computation — hash the branch, compare the root, check the depth — performed by every node.

Two consumers

The same rules serve both — there is no privileged path and no bypass, including at genesis: the very first mint was SPV-verified like every one since.

Burn format (BCS v1.0)

A Bitcoin burn that BATHRON can mint from is a standard Bitcoin transaction with two required outputs:

OP_RETURN   BATHRON|01|<NET>|<DEST_HASH160>   (29 bytes: "BATHRON" magic + version + network + P2PKH dest hash160)
value out   P2WSH(OP_FALSE)                    (provably unspendable — the BTC is destroyed)

P2WSH(OP_FALSE) commits to SHA256(0x00) = 6e340b9cffb37a989ca544e6bb780a2c78901d3fb33738768511a30617afa01d; the script can never be satisfied, so the coins are gone. The OP_RETURN names the BATHRON destination that receives the minted M0. A burn is unique by (btc_txid, vout); duplicates are rejected.

Maturity and genesis constants

Genesis is the same path, not a special case: block 0 is an empty coinbase, block 1 is the first TX_MINT_M0BTC (SPV-verified exactly like every later mint), and operator registrations follow. No burn is ever hardcoded — every minted satoshi traces to a verified Bitcoin destruction.