Author: shaofaye123, Foresight News

 

Gas is rolling in, sats/vb is as high as 600, and the FB OTC price is rising. Is CAT Protocol a new opportunity to replicate the inscription craze and fractal Bitcoin, or is it a protocol rush and a hot one? The current market heat is quickly ignited, and Fomo sentiment is spreading rapidly. Don't rush to get on the train, this article will take you to a three-minute quick view of CAT Protocol.

What is the currently popular CAT Protocol?

According to the official introduction of the ProtocolCAT project, CAT Protocol is a new UTXO-based Bitcoin token protocol they proposed, called Covenant Attested Token (CAT). The protocol is verified by miners and uses smart contracts to manage token minting and transfer. It has the following features:

  • No Indexer Required: The token's ruleset is guaranteed by Bitcoin consensus. Its data and logic reside on-chain and does not rely on any off-chain third party (such as an Indexer) to operate. It inherits the native Bitcoin proof-of-work security.

  • Modularity: CAT tokens can be used in other smart contracts to build more complex decentralized applications (e.g. AMM, lending, staking, etc.). It provides a powerful and versatile new building block for expanding the scope of Bitcoin.

  • Programmable minting: Token minting rules are executed by smart contracts. Excessive minting transactions will be directly rejected by the network.

  • Cross-chain interoperability: The CAT protocol allows trustless asset bridging between different blockchains, and applications can run across multiple blockchains.

  • SPV Compatible: CAT tokens support Simplified Payment Verification (SPV). Light clients can independently verify the authenticity of tokens without trusting a central server.

The CAT protocol supports both fungible tokens (called the CAT20 standard) and non-fungible tokens (called the CAT721 standard). Currently, CAT721 has not yet been launched.

CAT protocols emerge

However, there is more than one CAT Protocol in the market. According to the information sorted out so far, there are already three related protocols. Each has a lot of followers. The high popularity of ProtocolCAT may be due to its early start. It is difficult to judge how long the popularity will last. This article sorts out the existing information for a brief introduction. If there are any errors or omissions, please feel free to discuss. (The subheading below is the Twitter name of the project)

ProtocolCAT

The protocol was released at around 3 am on September 11, with 21 million CATs. It currently supports CLI for Mint. It is the only CAT Protocol that can be minted. There are traces of Chinese development in the code, and the project owner has not yet tracked down the specific information of the team members anonymously.

bc1plainview

bc1plainview claims to be the creator of the CAT20 protocol. He released CAT20 in August, and at the same time released the BRC20 protocol with the OP_CAT function. The project is from the opnet team, and the protocol will be activated at block 21,000, and is expected to be launched in about 2 days. He also pointed out that the current ProtocolCAT's so-called indexer-free is a huge scam, because they still need to run the indexer to view the token balance.

rot13maxi

CATNIP was proposed by Udi Wertheimer, co-founder of Taproot Wizards. It is also a secondary token protocol based on OP_CAT. CATNIP allows the market to place partial orders and bid. Users do not need to split UTXO in advance, but only need to buy the required number of tokens. In addition, the protocol will also allow on-chain L1 AMM and liquidity pools. There is no CATNIP token at present. CATNIP will only be available after OP_CAT is launched on the Bitcoin mainnet.

It is still in the early stages, so please exercise caution before participating.

Participation Guide

Cost Rate

At present, many bloggers have summarized code tutorials, but rarely mention the cost. You can check the cost on Mempool and OKX. At 300 sats/vb in the morning, about 0.005 FB was issued; at the current rate of 870 sats/vb, about 0.013 FB, and the FB OTC price has also reached 20 U, while previously FB was available for about 6.6 U.

Casting Tutorial

Self-casting requires certain computer knowledge. The following are the basic configurations and steps.

1. Configure the environment and install three dependencies, including git, Node.js, and Docker. Download the CAT Protocol code.

2. Run the Docker container. You need to run a Fractal full node on the server and run a local indexer.

3. Install and build the CLI.

4. Create wallet and mint deployment.

For specific code, please refer to: https://mirror.xyz/3p-labs.eth/0IWdR6toFMACCRZTwTAF3XFAv2TiEAPEAHqzVF707g8