CHIPs · CHIP-2024-12 · activated
P2S: Pay to Script
Makes bare Pay-to-Script outputs standard, raises NFT commitments from 40 to 128 bytes, and lifts the standard unlocking bytecode limit from 1,650 to 10,000 bytes.
Summary
“This proposal makes Pay to Script (P2S) outputs standard and increases the length limits on token commitments and standard unlocking bytecode.” See P2S.
A P2S output puts the contract’s locking bytecode directly in the output, with no hash wrapper. It has no address that a normal wallet can pay by mistake.
Motivation
- Wallet safety. Many contracts should not be “randomly payable.” Every P2SH contract has a payable address, so confused users can send funds to places they can never recover. P2S gives contract authors a primitive that is “both more byte efficient and safer for end users.”
- Simpler contracts. Covenants no longer need to build and check a P2SH hash for each output, then unpack it at spend time. The CHIP says this cuts at least 34 bytes of overhead per output for most covenant systems.
- Room to grow. Longer NFT commitments and unlocking bytecode serve vaults, multi-party covenants and DeFi apps.
What it specifies
- Standard outputs. The list of allowed output templates (P2PK, P2PKH, P2SH20, P2SH32,
OP_RETURN, bare multisig) is replaced by a length check: locking bytecode up to 201 bytes is standard. Longer bytecode is standard only if it is a validOP_RETURNdata output within the existing cumulative 223-byte limit. - Token commitments: maximum length raised from 40 to 128 bytes. This is a consensus change to CashTokens.
- Unlocking bytecode: the 1,650-byte standard limit is removed, so standard and consensus limits match at 10,000 bytes.
Current status
Activated on 15 May 2026 (version 1.0.3 was frozen for lock-in). The stakeholder table records 90 approvals, 1 disapproval (Coin Wallet) and 421 neutral; non-responses were counted as neutral.
Stakeholder positions
Only public statements we could link to. Silence is not listed as a position.