What does KIP17 add to Kaspa's scripting language?

KIP17 introduces full covenant support to Kaspa by extending its scripting language with transaction introspection opcodes and byte-string manipulation primitives. A covenant is a rule baked into a transaction script that can inspect and restrict how that transaction is spent in the future — think of it as a programmable spending condition enforced by the network. Before KIP17, Kaspa scripts had no way to look inside the transaction attempting to spend them; now they can validate stateful transitions encoded in UTXOs (unspent transaction outputs, the basic unit of Kaspa value). KIP17 builds on KIP10, which introduced the first wave of introspection opcodes. For a beginner, this means Kaspa can now support far more complex programmable logic, opening the door to trustless protocols and conditional spending rules that previously required trusted intermediaries.