Cofund maps the Bitcoin covenant landscape with 24+ use cases in new interactive atlas

Bitcoin covenants have been discussed, debated, and occasionally rage-tweeted about for over a decade. What they haven’t had, until now, is a clean visual map showing what they could actually do. Cofund, a company focused on Bitcoin multisig treasury applications, just published exactly that.

The project is called “The Covenants Use-Case Atlas,” and it catalogs more than 24 distinct covenant use cases in an interactive format. It covers everything from foundational vault designs to more exotic implementations like Ark non-interactive issuance and payment pools.

What the atlas actually covers

For the uninitiated, covenants are a proposed class of Bitcoin script upgrades that would let transactions include conditions on how funds can be spent in the future. Think of it like writing a check that says “this money can only go to rent, groceries, or savings.” Right now, Bitcoin transactions can specify who gets the funds but not what those recipients can do with them afterward. Covenants would change that.

The atlas organizes these use cases around several key proposals. CTV, or CheckTemplateVerify (formally BIP 119), proposed by Jeremy Rubin, is probably the most widely discussed. OP_CAT, another proposal that would restore a concatenation opcode to Bitcoin’s scripting language, gets its own spotlight. CSFS (CheckSigFromStack) rounds out the major supporting opcodes featured.

What makes the atlas more than a simple list is how it maps the interactions between these proposals. Some use cases rely on a single opcode. Others require combinations, showing how CTV and OP_CAT might function together in more advanced scenarios.

Each use case in the atlas carries a status indicator. Some are tagged as having “working code” or functional prototypes, meaning developers have already built proof-of-concept implementations. Others are labeled as “cataloged sketch,” essentially theoretical designs that haven’t been coded yet.

The interactive elements go beyond static diagrams. Cofund built in hover animations, sounds, and exploratory pathways designed to make the content accessible to people who aren’t steeped in Bitcoin scripting. Cofund CEO Jesus Najera spearheaded the initiative, positioning it as both an educational resource and a conversation starter for the broader Bitcoin development community.

Why covenants still haven’t shipped

The earliest covenant ideas trace back to around 2013. As of mid-2026, no covenant proposal has been activated on Bitcoin’s mainnet. The last major scripting upgrade, Taproot, activated in November 2021, and even that took years of discussion.

The current debate centers on which proposal to prioritize. CTV advocates argue it’s the simplest and most well-tested path. OP_CAT supporters point to its broader flexibility. Some developers want both. Others want neither, arguing that Bitcoin’s scripting capabilities are fine as they are.

The use cases worth watching

Among the 24-plus applications mapped in the atlas, a few categories stand out. Vaults would allow users to set up spending conditions with built-in time delays and clawback mechanisms. If someone steals your private key, you’d have a window to move funds to a recovery address before the thief could access them.

Payment pools would allow multiple users to share a single UTXO (unspent transaction output) while retaining the ability to exit independently, dramatically reducing on-chain transaction volume without sacrificing individual sovereignty over funds.

Coordination-free mining pools are a more niche but technically significant entry. Current mining pools require a central coordinator to distribute payouts. Covenant-enabled designs could remove that requirement, allowing miners to participate in pools without trusting a third party to handle distribution fairly.

Decentralized options also appear in the atlas, pointing toward Bitcoin-native financial instruments constructed without relying on external platforms or wrapped tokens on other chains.