This article is a bit long, so you can focus on the subheadings and the ending.
1. The relationship between ordinals, inscriptions, and public chain inscriptions.
The concept of inscriptions started with Bitcoin’s ordinals. Ordinals allow data to be recorded directly on-chain — it could be text, images, videos, etc. This is the only way BTC can add support for NFTs and other tokens, as it does not support smart contracts.
The Bitcoin network did not support smart contracts in the past, but after the Taproot upgrade in 2021, although it cannot achieve Turing completeness, it can already simulate some Turing complete things. This upgrade provided the soil for the birth of the Ordinals protocol.
Ordinals/Ordinal Theory is not a change or new feature added to the Bitcoin network. It uses one concept out of the box: Each Bitcoin is made up of "Satoshis" (sats). 1 Bitcoin = 100,000,000 Satoshis. Therefore, Satoshis are the native currency of the Bitcoin network.
On each Satoshi, you can "inscribe" (hence the name "inscription") anything you want. For example, you can inscribe the metadata of an NFT onto a Satoshi. These inscribed Satoshis can then be transferred to other addresses using Bitcoin transactions.
This allows the Bitcoin network to create "NFTs" in this way, while using "ordinal numbers" to uniquely identify each "satoshi".
To sum up, the ordinals protocol creates a way to record each Satoshi with metadata, essentially implementing NFT. - Satoshi can be uniquely identified using ordinals, hence the name "ordinals".
After that, someone established a currency issuance standard "BRC20" based on the ordinarys protocol, using "ERC20" as the standard. Subsequently, this asset issuance method, which is different from the traditional ICO, has been recognized by the market because it has no pre-sale, no insider trading, and a completely fair launch, inheriting the fundamentalism of the crypto world.
As BRC20 became popular, the heat began to spread to the public chain. Public chains with better programmability cited the "concept" and method of BRC20, ushering in the era of public chain inscriptions.
2. The operating principle of public chain inscriptions.
But instead of inscribing the data on individual SATs, EVM inscription inscribes the data in “Calldata”.
What needs to be explained here is the meaning of "transaction call data".
Calldata is optional data that can be sent in a transaction. Mostly used when passing inputs to smart contracts, and when aggregating data. Calldata is very cheap compared to calling a smart contract.
The public chain inscriptions are mainly engraved on BRC20 type tokens. The call data includes token ID, minting amount and operation. For example, the Fans inscription on Fantom is: {"p":"frc-20","op":"mint","tick":"fans","amt":"10000"}
In addition, Calldata data needs to follow this specific format to become a "(X)RC20" token, such as FRC20, and this set of rules is executed by smart contracts.
3. The decentralized meaning of the inscription has attracted a lot of attention.
Because of the above principles, many people think that inscriptions have no logical connection with the public chain and are just some "spam". Most technicians may have such an idea, which I think is biased. The significance of technology lies in whether the products built can bring huge value.
Every bull market in the past was driven by “resource redistribution.” BTC gave everyone the right to keep accounts, Ethereum’s ICO provided retail investors with a threshold to participate in the primary market, and #DeFi’s liquidity mining allowed retail investors to gain the benefits of “market makers.”
You see, every bull market is the result of distributing centralized resources and power to retail investors. Now, the form of asset issuance brought by ordinals and inscriptions is more profound than #ICO. It makes asset issuers no longer have a greater advantage. Once the inscription begins, everyone needs to "mint" instead of just a few people getting more chips.
Moreover, the metadata of ordinals and inscriptions are all stored on the chain and clearly visible to everyone. In the rules of inscriptions, everyone has the same starting point. This is exactly what the community and retail investors are looking forward to the most.
At the same time, thanks to the huge imagination space of the BTC ecosystem itself (the market value of the Ethereum ecosystem is hundreds of billions of dollars, while the market value of the#BTCecosystem is only a few billion dollars) and the limited "capacity", the public chain inscription inherits the meaning of ordinal decentralization while also inheriting huge traffic and resources.
With the participation of the community and retail investors, the inscription market has shown excellent performance, not only in terms of price. Even though it seems to have no value now, it has activated the entire public chain. As mentioned above, 90% of transactions on most EVM chains come from inscription activities.
According to The Block, the number of transactions on alternative Ethereum Virtual Machine chains (EVM), including Fantom, Avalanche, Celo Polygon, and BNB Chain, has surged since mid-November. Fantom saw the highest increase, reaching 1,321%, growing from 239,920 transactions on November 17 to 3.41 million on November 26.
But the inscriptions don’t stop there.
4. The function of the inscription.
We need to use the future to make decisions for the present. In the past, during the ICO era, 99% of the projects were worthless, but what does it matter? No road can lead to a destination that you know from the beginning.
All concepts that promote social progress and industry development must go through this process. When a technology is born, a "concept" will be described around the technology, and funds will be used to drive these concepts from imagination to implementation. In the concept formation stage, no one may know what they can do. They continue to try and explore empowerment. After being tested by the market, they will eventually form products that can truly promote industry development and social progress.
In this process, the most important thing is "trend correctness" - political correctness in the field of encryption. That is decentralization.
Therefore, the inscription, which is like a "blank sheet of paper" and centered on decentralization, has unimaginable potential in the future.
First of all, inscriptions can become the underlying assets in the public chain. Inscriptions have the characteristics of quantity limit, non-increase, decentralization, and permanent record on the chain, which is the core construction of "value storage".
In the crypto world, a public chain is like a country, and needs a complete ecosystem. Therefore, a public chain not only needs tokens as a monetary system and security guarantee within the public chain, but also needs value storage to anchor the price of the public chain.
The natural properties of inscriptions can provide value support for public chain tokens, and public chain tokens can set prices for inscriptions, making the financial system within the ecosystem more stable.
Secondly, inscriptions can bring a more diversified and active ecology to the public chain. Driven by the market boom, we have already seen its ability to activate the ecology. In the future, in the empowerment of inscriptions themselves, inscriptions will inevitably present a richer combination, and this is derived outward.
For example, the global content creator platform Umate has begun to accept AVAV payments. Of course, more applications will use inscription settlement in the future, because the community will form DAOs to promote inscriptions and the development of public chains.
Because the public chain inscription makes the community feel involved, it will make the community realize that they are also the masters of the "public chain ecosystem".
Take the#Fansinscription on the Fantom chain as an example. There are a total of 21 million inscriptions, with 25,666 addresses holding coins and a fixed consumption of 378,000 US dollars in GAS fees. It is one of the EVM inscriptions with the largest number of addresses holding coins.
There is no so-called "project party" to dominate all of this. These addresses have formed communities to promote the development of $Fans inscriptions, connect with the Fantom Foundation, promote the http://Frc20.io market and evmswap to be listed on major exchanges' web3 wallets, empower $Fans, and the community team will spontaneously develop Gamefi, Metaverse, platform coins, etc., which will also be more deeply tied to the Fantom ecosystem in the future. This consensus is very strong.
When the public chain ecology is bound to inscriptions, these consensuses, resources, and users will be transferred to the public chain, forming greater potential energy and gaining greater valuation space. Of course, this is just my most superficial imagination to describe the future of public chain inscriptions. It is not the end, and there is no end, because this industry is too early, just like when BTC was $1,000, you couldn’t imagine it could reach $60,000, and the same is true for the inscription track.
Retail investors should pay attention to the inscription track because it can bring more transparent and fairer rules, and most people don’t understand that there are huge returns from 0 to 100, which is an excellent opportunity for retail investors to overtake. Public chain project parties should pay more attention to the inscription track because it brings traffic and can make the ecosystem more diversified and richer.
Many people say that inscriptions are the touchstone of a public chain. Facts have proved that the#Fantompublic chain is a very technical public chain, because it performs very well under the strong pressure of inscription traffic. At the same time, in the process of building the inscription trading platform, the builders and developers of the community have also shown a high enough level and sensitivity. I believe that the#Fansinscription with the largest number of addresses and the best public chain#Fantomwill have a wonderful chemical reaction and become the leader of the new generation of craze. That's all.
