Inscription 2.0: Recursive Inscription Enables Bitcoin On-Chain Smart Contracts?

Author: Wuhai, PANews

Since the launch of Ordinals, the protocol on the Bitcoin chain, and the detonation of the brc20 concept proposed by the developer domo, micro-innovations based on the Ordinals protocol have emerged one after another, such as orc20, which intends to make brc20 more flexible, and GBRC721, which optimizes block space. However, regardless of whether these agreements are false demands and the heat of attention or hype, they are all optimizing the existing agreements in themselves, that is to say, they have been discussing how to make a horse-drawn carriage run faster. Not trying to invent the car.

However, the recent "recursive inscription" proposed by Casey Rodarmor, the creator of the Bitcoin protocol Ordinals, surprised the community and made the community more imaginative. On June 12, Raph, the new chief maintainer of the Bitcoin protocol Ordinals, merged the "recursive inscription" update No. 2167 into the Ordinals code on Github. This inscription can use the special "/-/content/:inion_id" syntax to Request content for other inscriptions. This simple change unlocks many powerful use cases.

Inscription 2.0 era may have arrived

According to developer Leonidas.og, inscribing 10,000 JPEG files for a PFP collection alone is very expensive, but inscribing 200 features from the collection, and then making another 10,000 inscriptions, each inscription uses a small amount of code to request features and render them programmatically image. Make artwork stored on the chain in a more efficient way.

In addition, in the previous inscription method, each inscription is independent, and there is no connection between the inscriptions. But this is about to change with the introduction of recursive glyphs. It is possible to completely burn many code packages on the Bitcoin chain, because the code (text form) is called, so the volume is very small, which allows the size of the inscription to break through the 4MB limit of the Bitcoin block size, and complex 3D video games fully on-chain to Bitcoin.

This also makes the community think that smart contracts similar to ERC20 may be able to run on the Bitcoin chain, making scalability and interoperability on the Bitcoin chain possible.

Moreover, the reason why many people are willing to pay for the NFT on the Bitcoin chain is not only hype, but also a story that is permanently stored on the chain. Therefore, if the recursive inscription makes it possible for the Metaverse, which includes subdivisions such as games and DeFi, to operate on the Bitcoin chain, its stories will be sexier than those on other chains.

**Perhaps, recursive inscriptions will lead the revolution of inscriptions on the Bitcoin chain, bringing Bitcoin inscriptions from the previous 1.0 to the era of inscriptions 2.0. **

After the birth of recursive inscriptions, the community or individuals have built multiple projects based on its grammar. At present, 6 collections and indexes have been launched on the trading platform MagicEden. The following PANews will take the Recursive Punks series, which ranks in the forefront of intraday trading volume and is very storytelling and dramatic, as an example.

Recursive Punks Drama Opening

On June 13, Recursive Punks officially released the free casting 10k Recursive ordinals series, and then the community spread it one after another. Because of the fomo brought about by the server upgrade of the first project on the new agreement, it was still driven by the desire to try new innovations. After being discovered by the Chinese community, the number of 10K was quickly burned. When Twitter KOLs retweeted one after another, their official website even failed to open.

However, after the burning in the community, users continue to find that the official developer of Recursive Punks used the old text, that is to say, the syntax of the recursive inscription text should be "/content/", but the official one is "/-/content/ :". As a result, users who used the official SVG file to burn the inscription earlier had a non-picture version, and then the community began to spread the correct correction method, which is to replace "/-/content/:" in the original SVG file with "/content/" .

Compared with the official version without pictures released by Recursive Punks, the burning of the revised version with pictures is relatively slow, because the community cannot confirm which version will become a series with stronger consensus. After 24 hours, the revised version of Recursive Punks with pictures was burnt. Among them, the Recursive Punks official also found a grammatical error, and tweeted that he hoped that the protocol developers and the community could recognize both the version without pictures and the version with pictures, but then deleted and changed the tweet, and launched a collection of versions without pictures on MagicEden.

What surprised the community is that it should be a series without pictures, but it shows a clear big picture on MagicEden. After technical analysis, it turned out that after Recursive Punks officially submitted the collection to MagicEden, it used front-end rendering to display pictures on the MagicEden platform. In other words, it does not use the implementation of recursive inscriptions to display, which is somewhat inconsistent with the community's expectations.

According to MagicEden data, the total transaction volume of the Recursive Punks series without pictures recorded using the old grammar reached 8.15 bitcoins within a day, making it the series with the largest transaction volume on the platform. Its highest price has risen to 0.002 bitcoin, and the relative burning cost has increased by up to 30 times. In addition, multiple punks with rare attributes were sold at a price of 0.05 bitcoin. The number of its holders also increased by more than 2,000 overnight.

The community-burned version with pictures after amended grammar is displayed on the new NFT platform ordyssey as a blurred image in the form of recursive inscriptions. Subsequently, the MagicEden platform was also launched, because the platform does not yet support the display of SVG format, and images can be displayed only after further support. The number of addresses currently held by Recursive Punks with pictures recorded using the modified grammar is constantly increasing. The current total transaction volume is 1.3 bitcoins, ranking third in the intraday transaction volume.

It is reported that the community is continuing to follow up, so that the correct version burned with the corrected syntax can be further developed. As for whether the version with pictures or the official version without pictures that the community supports and occupies the righteous side of the agreement, which one can have a stronger and broader community consensus, it remains to be further observed.

Summarize

**The emergence of recursive inscriptions has opened up the shackles of non-interoperability, non-programmability, and poor expansion, allowing more possibilities and imaginations on the Bitcoin chain. **For example, NFT can be combined with each other, making small games on the chain possible; or dismantling inscriptions, similar to fragmentation, resulting in more calls. There are also community members who think of websites that may achieve decentralization.

**Looking at the protocol level, the future is promising, and there are enough grand narratives waiting for developers and users to build and use. **But at present, the front end is still in a highly controlled situation, because whether an inscription or an NFT series can be collected and indexed on the platform determines the speed of its development and the consensus of being preached. Just like the Recursive Punks mentioned above, because of the index, new users cannot be identified for a while.

But these problems will be gradually solved with the development of the ecology, and we cannot stand still or watch the fire from the shore because of some detailed problems or difficulties that arise. The era of Bitcoin inscription 2.0 may be led by recursive inscription, and there are many opportunities and risks in it. Participate in this experiment with the lower body, explore, discover, and research, and continue to participate while controlling risks.