MIIX Labs: The Past and Present of Recursive Inscriptions
Introduction
Before the invention of movable type printing, how would people print a 1000-page book? They would have to carve 1000 stone blocks with characters on them, which was time-consuming and laborious. These 1000 stone blocks could only be used for printing that specific book.
However, with the invention of movable type printing, there is no longer a need to carve 1000 stone blocks to print a 1000-page book. Only a limited set of characters needs to be created in a character library, and these characters can be directly taken from the library and combined to form the desired book in a short amount of time.
This is similar to the Ordinals protocol with recursive inscriptions, which will greatly expand the scalability of the Bitcoin ecosystem. MIIX Labs believes that recursive inscriptions will become the next explosive point of the BTC ecosystem.
1. What are Ordinals
To understand what recursive inscriptions are, we first need to understand what Ordinals are.
In recent years, Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) have gained widespread attention in the blockchain world. From artworks and music to virtual land, NFTs give various assets unique digital properties. However, this trend has not been widely adopted on the Bitcoin blockchain until the emergence of Ordinals.
Ordinals is a protocol that allows each satoshi in Bitcoin to be identified and enables additional data transactions, a process called "recording." This technology not only creates another use case for Bitcoin but also makes the implementation of Bitcoin NFTs possible.
Each satoshi in Bitcoin has a unique ordinal number assigned based on the order of Bitcoin's minting and transfers, hence the name "Ordinals." This technology allows each satoshi to carry additional data, making it unique.
This means that the smallest unit of Bitcoin - satoshi, is no longer just a vessel of value but also a carrier of information.
According to MIIX Labs analysis, Ordinals has a fundamental difference from traditional NFTs. NFTs are usually created using smart contracts on blockchains such as Ethereum, Solana, and BNB Smart Chain, and sometimes the assets they represent are hosted elsewhere.
But Ordinals are directly recorded on individual satoshis and then included in blocks on the Bitcoin blockchain. Since Ordinals reside entirely on the blockchain without the need for sidechains or separate tokens, they inherit the simplicity, immutability, security, and durability of Bitcoin itself.
This means that as long as Bitcoin exists, the data stored in Ordinal can be accessed indefinitely. In contrast, if the data referenced by an NFT is deleted or its storage platform disappears, the NFT data will also be lost.
Therefore, the emergence of Ordinals brings new possibilities to Bitcoin, also known as Inscription 1.0.
2. What is BRC 20?
With the emergence of Ordinals, a standard for substitutable tokens built on the Bitcoin network has also begun to emerge.
An experimental token called Ordi, based on the Bitcoin network and the Ordinals protocol, represents the first application of the BRC-20 token standard. In a sense, Ordi triggered the market for BRC 20.
According to MIIX Labs, on March 8, 2023, the BRC 2 standard was created by Twitter user @domodata, inspired by Ethereum's ERC-20, and based on the Ordinals protocol. It allows developers to create and transfer substitutable tokens using the Ordinals protocol.
Unlike ERC-20, BRC-20 does not use smart contracts, but deploys, mints, and transfers tokens using JSON data from the Ordinals protocol.
The main characteristics of the BRC-20 standard include:
Security: BRC-20 tokens exist on the Bitcoin blockchain, inheriting the high security provided by the Bitcoin protocol. Bitcoin uses a proof-of-work (PoW) consensus mechanism and has a large number of miners to help protect the network, making it one of the most secure blockchains.
Compatibility: BRC-20 tokens are compatible with the Bitcoin blockchain itself, making it easier to integrate them into the Bitcoin ecosystem. In addition, existing Bitcoin developers can conveniently build and integrate BRC-20 tokens.
Substitutability: BRC-20 tokens are considered interchangeable, meaning they can be easily traded on exchanges, providing a simple alternative for Bitcoin trading beginners.
However, MIIX Labs analysis suggests that the BRC-20 standard also has some drawbacks:
Ecosystem Limitation: Despite becoming increasingly popular, BRC-20 is a relatively new token standard with a smaller ecosystem compared to ERC-20. This means there are fewer resources, developers, and tools available for building and managing BRC-20 tokens.
Potential High Transaction Fees: As BRC-20 token activity increases, Bitcoin transaction fees have increased with the growth of BRC-20 transactions.
In summary, BRC-20 tokens are still in their early stages and require more time to reveal their impact on the Bitcoin blockchain. This experimental phase leaves room for future improvements and optimization in better design choices.
BRC-20 tokens demonstrate that Bitcoin is continuously innovating and developing beyond a store of value and medium of exchange. They are growing rapidly and have the potential to play a larger role in the long-term future of the Bitcoin blockchain.
III. The Birth of Recursive Inscriptions
MIIX Labs analysis believes that recursive inscriptions will lead to a transformation in Bitcoin on-chain inscriptions, bringing Bitcoin inscriptions from the previous 1.0 era to the era of Inscriptions 2.0.
Since the sensational introduction of BRC-20, the crypto community has been pondering why not create a BRC-721 token, taking inspiration from ERC-721, just as BRC-20 was created with ERC-20 as reference?
And so, BRC-721 was born.
However, due to the fact that most ERC-721 tokens store images in centralized hosting requiring management fees, while BRC-721 directly engraves images on the Bitcoin blockchain, it poses significant cost challenges. With the popularity of Ordinals, congestion in Bitcoin on-chain inscriptions has become increasingly severe, further exacerbating cost pressures.
To address this problem, Gbrc-721 was created. Gbrc-721 successfully overcomes the high-cost challenge on-chain. In developing the Gbrc-721 project, the project only needs to upload the components of NFT and cleverly combine them together.
On June 12, 2023, Raph, the new Chief Maintainer of Ordinals, announced an important progress on GitHub. He merged the innovative inscription "Recursive Inscription" with the number 2167 into the Ordinals code.
In this version of the code, by using the syntax "/- /content/:inscription_id", the content of the inscriptions can refer to each other, achieving functionality beyond Gbrc 721. This innovation is implemented directly on the chain, without relying on off-chain parsing, fundamentally solving the problem of Gbrc 721.
Therefore, recursive inscriptions are born, and this simple and clever modification brings infinite creativity to Ordinals, stimulating people's imagination.
IV. Gameplay and Representative Projects
4.1 Gameplay
According to MIIX Labs, currently each project minting the recursive NFT has its own unique code, including SVG format and HTML format. However, it doesn't matter as long as you find the minting files provided by the project creator for download, the minting process is the same.
Today, we will use Recursive Punks as an example to briefly introduce the method of inscription minting.
Step 1: Open the Recursive Punks website: https://recursivepunks.io/
Step 2: Click on GitHub to access the project's codebase. Alternatively, you can also directly click the corresponding link below to download or download by entering the corresponding ID.
Step 3: Click on the top right corner to sign in to your GitHub account. If you don't have one, you can register using a Google email. After logging in, click on the "svg" folder.
Step 4: This is just a demonstration, so click on any file and then click "Download" to download the SVG file.
Step 5: Verify whether it has been inscribed by opening the verification website: https://bitpunks.io/Explorer/Inscriptions
Step 6: Start minting (inscribing) by clicking on the log-in link: https://unisat.io/inscribe
Once the payment is completed, all that is left is to wait. Of course, during this time, you can also check the progress of the packaging on-chain by clicking on the transaction hash corresponding to your payment to jump to it.
MIIX Labs reminds you that you can also log in to this website to check if the cost is low before casting, so as to control the cost of casting. You can check the real-time cost website at: https://mempool.space/zh/
4.2 Representative Projects
1. Recursive Playground
"Recursive Playground" is the first interactive recursive inscription NFT project, as demonstrated by its beta version, users can simply drag the mouse to change the state of the picture. Let the inscription NFT change from static and only visually observable to dynamic and interactive in real-time, allowing collectors to become co-creators and create their own works based on this.
In the eyes of "Recursive Playground," the unique artwork that is created in real-time through the collision of personal inspiration and computer interaction is interactive art.
Although the experience version of "Recursive Playground" is only the debut of "Interactive Recursive Inscription" NFT, its importance as a milestone in NFT cannot be denied. This is not just an attempt at interaction, but more of a validation of possibilities. Our understanding of NFT is no longer limited to the two-dimensional world, and the three-dimensional properties of NFT have been validated.
Imagine if we try to change the reaction logic behind "Recursive Playground" and extend the interactive limited to mouse clicks to gravity systems, fluid mechanics, and even time logic. Then, does "Interactive Recursive Inscription" NFT have more playability?
NFT will no longer be limited to conveying visual effects through the display screen. Through mouse interaction, users can feel its presence more. With just a gentle touch of a finger, NFT can create ripples in response to pressure.
2. Fservin
Using fundamental characteristics and JS webGL fluid simulator to generate personal webpages. According to the NFT interactive experience test, users only need to drag the mouse, and NFT can create various beautiful light and shadow effects based on fluid mechanics, aerodynamics, and other logics.
3. Speculum Aeternum Miraculum
Introducing mathematical equations and variables of time (block height), the color of the butterfly changes according to the addition of Bitcoin block height, achieving interaction between machines.
4. Recursive Doodinals
The project provides NFT series with fundamental characteristics, and players can DIY their own NFTs and then engrave them.
According to the official introduction of the project, Doodinals is the first fully community-created recursive art collection. Community players can DIY graffiti on io, and all element features support orientation, scaling, and rotation functions. The DIY-generated SVG files will be engraved on Ordinals, and each player's graffiti will have the opportunity to be included in the collection. According to official data, there are currently over 128 SVG files engraved on Ordinals.
5. Vibeland
The project is the first high-definition collection of 10K original works completed through recursion. The founder completed the random presentation of different PFP static HD images with a single inscription and completed the on-chain randomness. With each page rewrite, a brand new avatar will be presented, with up to ten thousand images available for random selection. This is completely impossible without recursion, and it also provides a backdrop for the future presentation of blind boxes on Bitcoin.
V. Future Outlook
MIIX Labs believes that the emergence of recursive inscriptions brings unlimited possibilities to the Bitcoin ecosystem. Next, let's boldly explore the future scenarios of recursive inscriptions.
1. Greatly reduces the threshold
Recursive inscriptions greatly reduce the entrepreneurial threshold of the Bitcoin ecosystem. Even with just a few lines of code modification, a completely new NFT series can be created, as demonstrated by the unillustrated version, illustrated version, large version, and high-definition large version of Recursive Punks.
In addition, recursive inscriptions significantly reduce the cost of entrepreneurship. Originally, a 10K collection required the upload of tens of thousands of images. Now, only 200 component images need to be uploaded, and they can be cleverly combined through code to complete the creation of a 10K collection.
2. Rich forms of expression
The emergence of recursive inscriptions has enabled Ordinals' underlying inscription browser (such as ord.io and ordiscan.com) to strive to support multiple media types, such as SVG, HTML, and JavaScript, in addition to the initial text type.
Recursive Inscription can now rival a universal webpage and display almost any content from a webpage. Furthermore, Recursive Inscription can reference other inscriptions, similar to how local webpages upgrade to the internet, greatly enriching the expression of inscriptions.
3. Stimulating the Potential of the Metaverse
The emergence of Recursive Inscription has brought possibilities for GameFi and the realization of the metaverse on the Bitlink chain.
A small game developed based on Recursive Inscription has already appeared - a recursive game developed by Ordz Games. Players can directly click on operations in the inscription browser, similar to the popular "Sheep".
With the feature of code invocation, Recursive Inscription achieves compact size, allowing the size of inscriptions to exceed the 4 MB limit of the Bitcoin block.
Therefore, in theory, we can construct the metaverse and GameFi on the Bitcoin chain, and even upload complex 3D games to the Bitcoin chain.
Of course, it is important to note that Recursive Inscription is still in its early stages, and all these ideas and concepts need continuous exploration and discovery to be realized.
6. Risks and Challenges
The implementation of Recursive Inscription depends on the Ordinals protocol, which is built upon the Ordinals protocol. If the "reference" part of the code is not implanted or subsequently removed from the Ordinals protocol, Recursive Inscription will be unusable.
According to MIIX Labs, the development of Recursive Inscription requires more support from underlying infrastructure, such as the leading exchange Unisat and MagicEden, as well as prominent inscription browsers and centralized exchanges like OKEX and BINANCE.
As of today, MagicEden has not yet supported the Recursive Punks V2 version mentioned above, and the normal display of Recursive Frogs was only implemented after a proposal from a community KOL.
In the short term, Recursive Inscription may bring prosperity to the Bitcoin ecosystem.
However, images, movies, code repositories, software code, and various types of new data inscriptions may accumulate in Bitcoin's memory pool.
As registrars bid higher and higher to confirm transactions, ordinary users who only want to pay for the purchase with Bitcoin will have to pay exorbitant premiums.
Therefore, in the long term, the Bitcoin network may become more congested and transaction fees may become more expensive.
In addition, recursive encryption may make it easier for fraudsters to add malicious software to the Bitcoin chain. Fraudsters can divide malicious software into multiple files and add them to people's devices when they download games, files, or software. This could lead to the loss of funds for the downloader.
7. Conclusion
In summary, MIIX Labs believes that the emergence of recursive encryption has sparked extensive discussions within the Bitcoin ecosystem, which may have far-reaching implications for the Bitcoin ecosystem and the entire industry.
The emergence of recursive encryption has brought boundless imagination to the narrative of the Bitcoin NFT ecosystem, and has continuously spawned excellent and innovative projects.
If this market is driven by sufficient capital, and if project teams continue to create and innovate, attracting enough users to participate, then undoubtedly, there are many good opportunities hidden within.
Be proactive in the face of new things, keep up with market trends, and seize the opportunity to invest in sectors with the potential to become hotspots.
We are optimistic about the infinite possibilities that recursive encryption can bring, but it is also important to recognize that recursive encryption is still in its early stages. Before embarking on adventurous attempts and investments, MIIX Labs reminds everyone to maintain risk awareness, fully understand the risks involved, and approach with caution, focusing on narratives that are understandable.
Contact MIIX Labs:
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