Overview of the Bitcoin Asset Issuance New Protocol

Rune Alpha

The popularity of Rune Alpha mainly stems from the recent attention towards the "rune" concept. This concept was initially proposed by Casey and has gained attention again due to BTC Core developer Luke's opposition to "inscriptions". The essential difference between "runes" and "inscriptions" lies in their storage locations: "runes" are stored in UTXO, while "inscriptions" such as BRC-20 based on Ordinals exist in the segregated witness data of Bitcoin scripts.

It is worth noting that although Rune Alpha claims to be "rune", it is actually a new inscription protocol built on version 0.11.1 of the ordinals protocol, which is different from the "rune" concept proposed by Casey according to its white paper. Nevertheless, Rune Alpha has successfully attracted a lot of attention by leveraging the hype around "rune". The minting cost of its first token $cook was only a few dozen dollars, and the current over-the-counter price has soared to around 400 dollars, with no formal trading market launched yet.

CBRC-20

CBRC-20 is an efficient meta-protocol standard proposal for fungible tokens on Bitcoin, developed based on Ordinals. It maintains the same functional logic as the BRC-20 meta-protocol while significantly reducing the cost per inscription and simplifying the indexing process by utilizing the new metadata and metaprotocol fields introduced in ord 0.10+.

The main optimizations of CBRC-20 include:

1. Reduce recording costs: the operation can be completed by simply engraving the number "0" on the token, reducing costs by about 10 times.
2. Simplified Index: All information can be directly obtained from the inscription envelope.
3. MIME Data Flexibility: Allows the use of any MIME data to operate CBRC-20 tokens.
4. Compatibility: Can utilize the new features of Ordinals 0.10 and above.

The CBRC-20 team has adopted various innovative methods to launch its tokens on the trading market, including listing the inscription SWAP through RuneX and utilizing the Tampermonkey plugin to enforce the listing on Unisat. The community has also spontaneously developed a CBRC-20 token trading market and is attempting to attach the CBRC-20 tokens to the BRC-20 tokens for listing on Unisat.

Recently, the founder of CBRC-20 launched the OSMOSIS experiment and deployed the first meta-meta protocol inscription $SYMM. This approach allows for the simultaneous execution of multiple meta-protocol operations, achieving a certain degree of "backdoor listing".

BTNS

Broadcast Token Naming System (BTNS) is an ecosystem built by early Bitcoin holders and developer member @jdogresorg. Its core concept is to attach broadcast signals in Bitcoin chain transactions, utilizing blockchain records as data basis, and achieving the issuance of Bitcoin native assets (token and NFT) through ledger indexing.

BTNS-420 is a comprehensive asset issuance and transfer protocol standard based on BTNS, making the vision of BTNS possible. Compared to inscriptions and runes, BTNS has the following features:

1. Not occupying or altering Bitcoin is more in line with the development direction of the Bitcoin ecosystem.
2. Asset issuance based on broadcasting is more open and transparent.
3. Completely open source, with no potential risks.
4. May transform Bitcoin into a fully playable and environmentally friendly mainstream ecological chain.
5. Provide a fairer way to acquire assets, such as airdrops, fair indexing, etc.

However, due to @jdogresorg currently being on leave, the market development progress of BTNS is temporarily stalled.

Summary

Rune Alpha and CBRC-20 are both developed based on Ordinals and belong to the layer two protocol. CBRC-20 performs better in terms of innovation, achieving simultaneous minting of multiple protocol inscriptions. BTNS is a broader concept, belonging to the meta-protocol category. It uses a "broadcast" form, allowing the issuance of assets on Bitcoin without occupying Bitcoin itself, bringing new possibilities to the Bitcoin ecosystem.