Abstract: Culture is the foundation of the value consensus of digital cryptocurrency, and the dissemination of value consensus is inseparable from the culture of cryptocurrency. Value consensus is Meme, and cryptocurrency cannot get rid of the Meme phenomenon. BTC is the earliest and largest Meme. BTC reprinted its core culture through a news article, implanted the culture directly into the Genesis Block, and finally realized BTC's self-bootstrapping.
Restoring the tradition of on-chain culture and decentralized culture is a feasible way to return to the spontaneous bootstrapping of BTC. The emergence of Ordi and Sats inscriptions, inscription code information is directly implanted into the BTC community, is the spontaneous starting point of the BTC Renaissance. The integration of encryption culture and technology, the conscious realization of the binding of encryption assets and culture through content on the chain, will be one direction of the development of Inscription 2.0.
1. Prologue
At around 6:15 pm on January 3, 2009, the genesis block of Bitcoin was born on a small server in Helsinki, Finland. In this genesis block, Satoshi Nakamoto recorded a news item from The Times that day in the script area:
"On January 3, 2009, the chancellor was on the verge of delivering a second round of bank bailouts"
Thus, the era of exploration in the crypto world began. Adventurers, ambitious people, and capitalists set sail in pursuit of the treasures of the crypto world, looking for their own belonging.
Thirteen years passed by in a flash, and Satoshi Nakamoto had ascended to the throne of God and his body was nowhere to be found. The script area of BTC once again ushered in a highlight moment. Because of the upgrade of BTC's segwit and Taproot, the space recorded by BTC has returned to everyone's field of vision again. The appearance of the inscription unearths the value of the storage space on BTC: this is a storage space protected by a computing power network of more than 400 million TH/s to protect data security. Using this space as a ledger, the security is stronger than any blockchain. The route of Inscription technology is the exploration of the technical route of BTC chain as a multi-asset financial certificate platform. The existence of the inscription value is to demonstrate the value of the BTC script space under this architecture.
And this is just the starting point of BTC’s revival. Members of the crypto community have begun to reflect on the original understanding of BTC: BTC can not only be used as a ledger for BTC, but also as a ledger for other assets! What follows is a reflection on Satoshi Nakamoto’s behavior. What is the significance of reprinting news from a paper newspaper in the storage space of BTC? What’s the point of repeatedly loading off-chain human-readable content on-chain?
Being able to answer this question solves the product motivation for uploading social content to the chain.
2. Value consensus requires attention, and Meme plays with attention!
Friends who are new to the currency circle, especially those who have come from the blockchain circle, are often confused by projects like EOS that have advanced technology, good experience, but messy valuations. And this is because there is no clear distinction between technical consensus and value consensus.
2.1 Consensus is divided into consensus on technical route and consensus on value orientation.
The value of BTC was also created from scratch, and ultimately achieved value bootstrapping. In the process of achieving value bootstrapping, the community must not only reach a technical consensus, but also a value consensus. Simply achieving a technical consensus does not mean having a strong value consensus.
Take EOS as an example. The valuation of EOS has troubled many technicians: Although the technology is obviously very good, why has the price collapsed? Even today, EOS technology is not backward. The experience interaction and even ecological applications on the chain were once no worse than ETH. But all technical barriers and ecological advantages cannot stop people from the foundation from selling EOS and buying BTC and ETH. This kind of cool operation makes EOS a tool for the team to cut leeks in the eyes of community members. When an asset forms a stereotype in the eyes of investors, reversing the consensus requires a huge amount of capital. Without capital support and the departure of core members, no matter how good the product is, it cannot support the valuation of EOS.
EOS Ecological Panorama in 2018: I also had a lot of money back then
On the other hand, Doge, the originator of Meme coins, didn’t even have any developers left before Musk ordered it. Musk's call for orders has made most investors believe that with the blessing of Musk's social influence, Doge will be seen, recognized, liked and held by more people. The consensus diffusion of tokens will be even more powerful if it relies on Musk as a source of communication. This kind of community consensus has raised the price of Doge from 0.014 to 0.8 US dollars.
In two cases, EOS has good technology and good products, but does not have a good price. Doge is a pure Meme, with no ecology and no technology, but high valuation: technical consensus is not the same as value consensus.
2.2 The process of reaching a consensus on value orientation is the process of forming a Meme
BTC's technical consensus ensures that each account can fully control its own permissions and there is no double spending. As for the technical consensus, from the moment BTC was born, BTC’s technical white paper has assumed the obligation of publicity. It took a year and a half for BTC to go from having no price to having a price, and from someone mining it to actually realizing payment. Over the past year and a half, BTC community members have been constantly reflecting on themselves, not just as a chain, but whether BTC is safe enough. Moreover, what lingers in the minds of these pioneers is whether BTC is valuable and how much it is worth. And this is a value consensus. Consensus of value is always subjective. The foundation for the BTC value consensus is "Denationalization of Currency" and FUD on currency centralization. This piece of news written into the genesis block is the seed and trigger of FUD. Without the reprint of this Genesis Block, this news would have been buried in the vast archives of The Times.
Satoshi Nakamoto is the master of attention. Reviewing the successful launch of BTC, Satoshi Nakamoto has been making excuses for crypto giants in the crypto community. For example, he showed David that BTC had realized the B-cash concept proposed by David, and received David's support off-chain. This kind of call directly establishes a brand for BTC in the community, thereby gaining community attention. On January 12, 2009, Hal Finney received 10 Bitcoins from Satoshi Nakamoto when he was testing Bitcoin transfers, and became the first recipient of Bitcoin transfers. After that, Satoshi Nakamoto often transferred the mined BTC to friends in the crypto community, gaining the attention of community members through this behavior. And this behavior later evolved into one of the unique ways to build attention for crypto projects: airdrops!
Going back to the first real-life BTC transaction, Laszlo Hanyecz purchased two pizzas with 10,000 BTC. In this exchange, BTC had a price for the first time. Both parties to the transaction know about BTC. The prerequisite for both parties to reach a consensus on the purchasing power of BTC is that both parties agree on the value narrative of BTC. The prerequisite for agreeing with the value narrative is to be able to notice the value narrative of BTC. Satoshi Nakamoto engraved meaningful news headlines on the genesis block, which allowed every BTC evangelist to automatically tell the value narrative of BTC when explaining the history of BTC. And this is the most direct and efficient value capture.
2.3 Fluctuations in currency prices cannot escape the Meme phenomenon
Most of the coins are Meme coins. Looking back at other tokens in the currency circle, there are many mainstream tokens (UNI, ARB, OP) without clear value capture support. With more assets, rights and obligations are difficult to distinguish, and even effective value capture is difficult to find. The valuation of the currency circle cannot be explained using monetary theory, nor can it be explained using financial assets. BTC claims to be a peer-to-peer cash payment system. Today, how many people actually use BTC to pay? Let’s be bold, BTC is the biggest Meme. The issue of currency price is the issue of Meme. It is precisely because of the Meme attribute that the assets in the currency circle have an attribute that is different from traditional finance, namely attention. Its fluctuation cycle is also very different from traditional finance.
Even the value of utility tokens contains elements of Meme. The pricing of financial assets ultimately depends on supply and demand. Supply and demand originate from changes in people's decision-making, which are influenced by emotions influenced by information. Behavioral finance has long been a consensus in the investment industry. The traditional financial value represented by tokens and memes are not mutually exclusive. Memes can either increase or decrease the value of utility tokens.
Therefore, what we say about currency prices is about memes.
In the short term, currency prices can be manipulated by patterns, but in the long term, the size of the community holding tokens and their willingness to hold the currency depend on whether the value output is successful. Just like Apple mobile phones, even if the price/performance ratio is low, users still buy it. Only long-term believers and long-term currency holders are the value support of the token. And these believers and currency holders are inspired by culture.
2.4 Reaching consensus requires cultural communication
The technical consensus of tokens and the value consensus of tokens are formed through different paths. Technical consensus helps form a consensus on the value of tokens. Whether it is technical consensus or value consensus, there is a perceptual part, and there are people who are lazy with intuitive thinking. Therefore, unlike copying cold code in different computers, consensus must be spread among people by using warm content as a carrier. These contents that are warm and spread among people are what we usually define as social content.
All Crypto project parties have no differences in their understanding of building brands and establishing value consensus through social media and social content. Almost all the project parties I know have various social accounts and social spaces for private communication. From community operations to group mods, the project team will form its own community echelon. Social accounts have become the source of communication, and communities or a series of encrypted small circles have become channels of communication.
BTC's technical white paper is calm and objective, but the news engraved in the Genesis Block is warm. This news reflects the value orientation that Satoshi Nakamoto wants to promote to BTC followers. The Genesis Block is deployed all over the world with full nodes. As long as BTC exists, this digest advocating BTC's value orientation will not stop its spread. Every time people read this digest, they will be reminded again and again that the end of the centralized central bank is approaching. If we regard BTC as a religion, then "British Chancellor of the Exchequer's bailout" is the doomsday prophecy of the religion. And BTC is Maitreya, the Messiah, and the Noah's Ark in the end of the world.
The currency circle has always understood cultural communication best. Don’t look at the past, just look at the inscriptions, various small pictures, and various slogans to let more people understand the Meme culture represented by the four letters. Unfortunately, the communication area is still dominated by Web2 social media. Meme itself does not have a strong value orientation like BTC. Many inscriptions cannot find their own position in the process of dissemination. Successful inscriptions, on the one hand, occupy the orthodox seat of inscriptions, and on the other hand, they form a unique culture in terms of narrative, such as "1 sats=1 sats" in the Sats community.
In summary, cultural content is the carrier of value orientation. This understanding coincides with the Meme theory. Meme is an information unit in cultural communication. Culture here generally refers to thoughts, concepts, customs, art forms, etc. In order to support the price of tokens, designers must consider the relationship between culture and currency prices during the process of cultural dissemination. The memes contained in BTC made a good start for the crypto community. Unfortunately, many subsequent tokens known as "memes" often only pursue the cost of spreading "memes" and abandon the relationship between "memes" and token value. relation. This is also the reason why after BTC, there will only be a coin name with memes, and there will no longer be a narrative of memes.
3. Content on the chain: Capture the native attention on the chain
Capturing native attention on the chain by uploading content to the chain is currently a very rare content uploading strategy. Other tracks have not formed a sustained economic cycle, and most of them are in the experimental stage.
3.1 Reaching a broad consensus on value orientation requires capturing attention
Reaching a value consensus first requires access to information. In modern society, the cost of content creation is almost zero. Compared with the surging content, attention has become a scarce commodity since a hundred years ago. From the placement of mainstream media to the pit of KOL, from Web2 to Web3, the operation of the project will not ignore the importance of attention. From the emergence of the first generation of print media, attention has become the media's main trading commodity. In the Web2 era, those platforms that hold the traffic throat regard traffic distribution as the source of platform monopoly profits.
In the traditional business world, the purpose of advertising a product is to let consumers know about the product itself and to promote its attributes and value proposition. However, the most high-end advertising often uses the method of outputting values. Multinational giants such as Apple and Huawei are well versed in this as long as they provide differentiated products. There is no difference between this output of values and the output of values of digital crypto assets.
In the traditional field, the methods of capturing attention in the currency circle are also similar. There is event marketing where an NFT is auctioned for tens of millions of dollars at Sotheby's, there is activity marketing where a party is included in a cruise, and there is brand marketing where the naming rights of a stadium are secured.
The currency circle also has information channels on the chain. For example, although the inscription on BTC is only 4 characters long, it directly injects Meme information into the core of the BTC community. Whether for or against the inscription. The appearance of the inscription requires members of the BTC community to take a stand. The information on this chain is eternal and open. Inscriptions that comply with the rules can be engraved on the BTC blockchain and read by others. The process of casting inscriptions is regarded as a certain address liking the piece of information, which is a public announcement of attitude. However, the information on the chain of traditional inscriptions is too sparse, and the attitude expressions of community members are too single.
It is undeniable that Satoshi Nakamoto’s content selection is exquisite. Perhaps nothing else can pierce the fragility of centralized finance like this piece of news. In this unprecedented marketing, we see the value of social content recorded in the genesis block. It is the eternal creation space on BTC that has pushed this exquisite narrative material into the spotlight of the cryptocurrency circle’s attention, and it has become more prominent as the consensus between blockchain and BTC grows.
On-chain media is different from traditional media, not only in terms of technical routes and business logic, but also in the population it covers.
3.2 Web3 Media Industry: Content on-chain is a content filter with price-to-earnings ratio as the core
In the history of blockchain, many projects have considered doing business similar to traditional media on blockchain, but due to efficiency issues. Whether it is text media, multimedia, or short videos, it is difficult to collect the same attention as in the Web2 world. Whether it is product form or the content accumulated in the product, Web3 media products lag behind Web2 media by a lot. Counting financial token subsidies, Web3 media products have no way to compete with Web2 products in terms of content appeal. The content algorithms of products such as Douyin, Instgram, and YouTube have already reached the pinnacle.
Web3 media can only find another way to challenge Web2. BTC inscriptions are an alternative way to put content on the chain. Although there are only 4 characters on the chain, the 4 characters are indeed rooted in the BTC community. Take the inscription Sats as an example. The casting of the inscription cost tens of millions of dollars in total. The community used real money to demonstrate the value of the Sats culture. According to the current data of the Unisats market, there are less than 1,800 BTC inscriptions included. Compared with traditional web2 media, a large amount of content is filtered out. From this perspective, the content on the chain in the form of inscriptions is a content filter with price-to-earnings ratio as the core. Only cultural memes that can afford to spend money and think have potential can occupy a place in the inscription market.
Content filters are also attention focussers. While attention remains unchanged, we reduce the total amount of content by increasing the cost, and the same content can receive more attention.
3.3 Attention focus: How content on the chain competes for attention
As mentioned earlier, compared to Web2, the content on the chain is like a password, boring and boring. Can on-chain content really compete with Web2 media content for scarce attention resources? The answer is yes.
3.3.1 Gain-oriented attention gathering
The content on the chain is like a password, but it is a password for wealth. Thousands of times the price increase is like a hook for attention, catching the attention of those who are willing to get rich. If a person wants to find the wealth code in the inscription, he can try to change his destiny. Instead of searching hard in traditional media, you can directly follow the lists and pictures on these inscription exchanges to get more information. Trading volume and the rise and fall of floor prices are the secret words of the industry. Interested people will join various web2 media and various offline circles according to the code of the inscription in the inscription selection, and conduct a more detailed investigation into the culture, community, and even the distribution of personnel chips corresponding to the inscription.
The success of Inscription Ecology tells us that on-chain content can gather attention through revenue orientation. The same is true for BTC. The higher the price of BTC, the more people will pay attention to BTC, and then understand the genesis block and the dilemma of the British Finance Minister in 2009, thus having a vivid understanding of the urgency of decentralization.
Profit-oriented attention has another meaning. The value of attention should be related to its wealth control, not to heads. Assume that an on-chain media can only reach 1% of the world’s population, but these people can control 50% of social wealth. Then the advertising value of such media must be far greater than media advertising that can reach 50% of the world's population but only affect 10% of social wealth. High-end circle marketing takes this path. On-chain content media takes full advantage of this advantage. When a person's interests are more bound to an asset on a certain chain, then he or she will care more about the content information related to this asset.
3.3.2 Attention collection of web3 closed traffic
The content on the chain is closed to a certain extent. Users who watch Unisats and OK Wallet are dedicated users. Their attention will not be diverted to other places because of interesting videos and texts. In the closed space on the chain, the content is extremely limited. Even if the attention is not as good as traditional Web2, the different ways of directing attention determine that these attentions are relatively closed. Life on the chain is in a gradual development process, and more and more people are starting to open Web3 accounts and enter the Web3 world. This part of attention will grow with massive adoption. On one side is closed attention, and on the other side is the growing attention flow. The competition for attention of content on the chain is promising in the future.
Closure is also reflected in the fact that the content space on the chain is independent and cannot be tampered with. When a lot of media information has been flooded by the information tide, only the information on the chain is relatively clear and can be checked without fear of being deleted or tampered with. This attribute is particularly suitable for maintaining the core attributes of Meme culture.
3.3.3 Comprehensive coupling of assets and content
By putting the content on the chain through inscriptions, the content becomes entangled with the token transaction and becomes difficult to separate. This data structure ensures that content and assets are close enough in space. This point goes back to the success theory of BTC and BTC inscriptions. It is precisely the digest of The Times that is engraved in the genesis block of BTC, so that believers in BTC can be charged with centralized fragile faith again and again. It is by implanting the inscription json code like "dust" into the BTC script that the Meme culture of the inscription can be connected to the BTC community. This is a kind of content placement targeted at communities and assets, and the attention pursued is also precisely targeted.
In summary, on-chain content can challenge Web2’s attention capture from the perspective of value, closure, and user accuracy. Therefore, content on-chain is not only feasible, but has been successful in the era of BTC bootstrapping. During the subsequent on-chain ICO period, Meme, which was continuously incubated, also repeated the success of content on the chain. It’s just that we are addicted to learning the content uploading method of traditional web2 media, and turn a blind eye to the continuous successful content uploading cases.
4. Social Inscription: The Renaissance of BTC
4.1 A fighting style that embodies courage and determination on the face
If a token wants to form its value consensus, in addition to the utility token directly forming an economic closed loop, it must also spread through culture and form a Meme. Whether it is a utility token or a non-utility token, cultural communication is an indispensable part. Unlike other later tokens that established Meme through off-chain media and communities, BTC also uses on-chain space as a media space. A piece of news sent centralized currencies to the gallows of history.
As a result of such an exquisite design, how many people in the currency circle can escape the baptism of this PUA mass? The development history of BTC tells us that the low-level content related to the currency is to transmit information, and the high-level content is to output value. This is no different from traditional brand strategy. Content must carry culture, and culture must support value. After Satoshi Nakamoto, there is no such master.
Since the end of 2023, the industry has been shouting for the renaissance of Bitcoin. The narrative is biased toward a confrontation with ETH’s orthodoxy monopoly. Let’s not talk about culture, where did the Renaissance come from?
Social inscription focuses on the establishment of community culture, coupling assets and community culture, and is a revival of a way to build value consensus.
4.2 Social Inscription: The Meeting of Encryption Culture and Encryption Technology
Social inscription is a brand new inscription concept. By adding attribute strips in json, it gives inscriptions more space on the chain to display unique culture. With each casting, each caster can write what he or she deems important to the inscription. By increasing the display space of on-chain content, perhaps social inscriptions can replicate the successful case of building FUD on the BTC chain. Although social inscriptions are still being explored as an emerging species, and their rules, mechanisms, even gameplay and token dynamics are all in the exploratory stage, as long as there is hope for the success of BTC, the cost of various experiments will be worthwhile.
On the other hand, Social Inscription inherits Inscription’s attitude towards the BTC script space. And this attitude is the biggest squeeze on the value of BTC inscription space. I believe that with the emergence of various layer2s that are compatible with the BTC mechanism. We can see that in the case of asynchronous consensus, the blockchain impossible triangle that plagues the Web3 industry can be solved. This is one direction of development of encryption technology.
Social Inscription will be the first successful meeting of encryption culture and technology in 16 years, and it may bear fruitful results.
5. The Possibilities and Limitations of Social Inscriptions
Social inscription is a brand new thing, and the direction of exploration is the combination of human nature and technology. In this new perspective, imagination is very important. If there is high-quality content and a culture that matches the meme can be created, social inscriptions may subvert the current value creation model of meme tokens.
Most religions in the world have a doomsday doctrine, because religion is the only way to salvation in the doomsday. So for believers, religion is a necessity. The bailout of the British Chancellor of the Exchequer is the doomsday set by the BTC religion. Therefore, the cultural structure of BTC is very different from other memes, and it has also achieved a height that other memes can hardly reach.
In addition to the cultural perspective focused on in this article, Social Inscription is also considering the possibility of social graphs on the chain. Transactions on the chain reflect the relationship between accounts. These graphs
Social inscription realizes the possibilities of technology, but whether it can create content that carries culture determines the height of social inscription.
Although the ecology on BTC to which Social Inscriptions belongs is supported by the BTC consensus, it is also subject to the constraints of BTC technology. The space resources on the BTC chain are scarce, and the limit of content on the chain will restrict the culture formed.
Quote:
"Attention Economy: How to Turn Public Attention into Business"
"Introduction to Communication Studies"
"How Cryptosphere Meme Culture Changes Supply and Demand Models to Create Consensus?" 》
"Bitcoin Renaissance: Changes and Changes in Value and Consensus"
"Explaining the Importance of Attention in the Cryptoeconomy"
