The emergence of Quantum Cats in the Bitcoin NFT (Non-Fungible Token) space has allowed for dynamic changes in Bitcoin engravings, signaling a new era for Bitcoin NFTs.
(Timeline:
Bitcoin NFT trading is hot! Weekly Ordinals sales volume ranks second only to Ethereum.
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(Background:
Report: How did Bitcoin engravings and BRC-20 explode? The origin of that crazy week.
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Table of Contents
The Changes of Quantum Cats – Recursion + Pre-signed Transactions
The Changes of Pizza Ninjas – Recursion + Sat Endpoint
Conclusion: The grassroots era of Bitcoin NFTs has changed
Narrative scarcity
Technical innovation
The Quantum Cats series, to be released by the Taproot Wizards team, is an upcoming and highly anticipated Bitcoin NFT project.
Quantum Cats
Apart from the strong influence of Taproot Wizards in the Bitcoin NFT ecosystem and the opportunity for players to have a chance of getting on the whitelist for the “Great Wizard,” Quantum Cats is an interesting project.
What will Quantum Cats become in a year?
We know that the Bitcoin mainnet does not have smart contracts, and once an engraving is made, its content is fixed. How does Quantum Cats achieve the continuous change of engraving images? BlockBeats will explore this interesting question with you. After exploring this question, we will also discover that Bitcoin NFTs have entered a new era.
The Changes of Quantum Cats – Recursion + Pre-signed Transactions
The CTO of Taproot Wizards, @rot13maxi, mentioned in a tweet that the following technologies were used to achieve the dynamic changes of Quantum Cats:
Recursive engravings
Pre-signed transactions
Symmetric encryption
Client load management
Recursive engravings are probably familiar to everyone. In short, recursive engravings allow engravings to refer to each other and obtain content. Recursive engravings contain JavaScript code, and when a browser views an engraving that includes JavaScript code, the browser executes the code in a sandbox, resulting in the content obtained by executing the code.
It is easy to understand how the changes of the images are achieved by referring to other engravings on the chain. However, if the content being referred to is an engraving that has already been chained, the referenced content becomes transparent, and there are no surprises.
What can be done? This is where pre-signed transactions come in. If the referenced content is an engraving that has not yet been chained, the displayed result will naturally be “404 Not Found”. Pre-signed transactions are performed for the “opening” action, but they are not broadcasted. When the pre-signed transaction is broadcasted one day, the referenced content appears, and the Quantum Cats image changes.
Symmetric encryption is used to ensure that there is no data leakage before users see the updated images, preventing surprises from being spoiled. It is worth mentioning that Quantum Cats actually has two additional safeguards.
The first safeguard is the addition of an extra layer of reflection. For example, backgrounds, bodies, noses, and other features are assigned as “layers”. Each Quantum Cat will point to a JSON file, and its ID will be reflected to a new short ID, which will then be reflected to the engraving ID of the feature. This JSON file is called a “layer linker”. Before the “layer linker” is chained, holders can only see that they have referenced the “layer linker”, but they do not know what features will be assigned after execution.
This first safeguard is to prevent the troubles caused by direct referencing of engravings. Even if delayed chaining can be applied to directly referenced engravings to maintain confidentiality, the rarity of Quantum Cats’ features can still be determined based on the number of references.
The second safeguard is symmetric encryption, which is used to prevent sudden increases in mining fees after the “opening” transaction is chained to the JSON file. If the transaction cannot be completed immediately, the code of the JSON file will be exposed before the “opening”. What can be done? Each “layer” is symmetrically encrypted.
As for client load management, it is not directly related to the dynamic changes of Quantum Cats, but it provides a good experience for users when browsing a bunch of Quantum Cats, preventing network timeouts and browser thread pool exhaustion.
In addition to the approach taken by Quantum Cats, there is also the recursion + Sat Endpoint method used by Pizza Ninjas.
The Changes of Pizza Ninjas – Recursion + Sat Endpoint
Sat Endpoint is actually a greatly enhanced version of recursive engravings. By using the Sat Endpoint feature, re-engraving can be performed on one satoshi, and different versions of engravings on one satoshi can be retrieved and displayed.
If the technical innovation of Quantum Cats is more focused on its artistic narrative (paying homage to OP_CAT) and artistic behavior (progressive opening), Pizza Ninjas, using the recursion + Sat Endpoint, aims to create breakthroughs in functionality.
Moreover, Sat Endpoint has an advantage of “trust” compared to smart contracts.
Although engravings are immutable, Sat Endpoint can use re-engraving to allow engravings to be upgraded in a way permitted by the holders. The ability to change smart contracts lies in the hands of the project team/developers, but in Bitcoin, the situation is completely different. It can be understood as a software releasing multiple versions, and users can choose to stay with their preferred/stable older versions or upgrade to the latest version because only NFT holders have the power to re-engrave. Furthermore, NFTs using different versions of “smart contracts” (which are actually .js files) will remain intact within the same series, unlike Ethereum, where contract changes can cause a series of NFTs to split.
The diagram of Pizza Ninjas illustrates this well—developers release different versions of .js files, and holders can choose (re-engrave) which one to use.
Of course, the most remarkable aspect is that Sat Endpoint has actually turned simple artworks into token-gated programmable mini-computers, allowing the code on the engravings to run directly through various engraving browsers.
We have seen someone engraving the classic game “DOOM” in the early days of Ordinals. With Sat Endpoint, even more creative and imaginative possibilities can be explored on a single engraving. Taking Pizza Ninjas as an example, the team designed custom JavaScript code to provide holders with a simulator of the Nintendo classic game console SFC, allowing holders to engrave SFC game ROMs into their own Pizza Ninja and turn it into a game console running on Bitcoin.
With the continuous exploration of various experts in the Bitcoin ecosystem, more geeky explorations like NFT game consoles will appear. Pizza Ninjas proposes a concept called “Art is Application (AssA)”.
Conclusion: The grassroots era of Bitcoin NFTs has changed
The numerous new features brought by the update of the Ordinals protocol and the influx of funds have raised the threshold for “entrepreneurship” in Bitcoin NFTs. It can be said that the era of “grassroots entrepreneurship” where one had to download the engraving image from the website oneself and focus on fairness and free narratives has passed. The most intuitive feeling for everyone may be that the quality of the images has improved, but upon closer examination, it can actually be divided into two main development directions.
Narrative scarcity
The existence of engraving numbers has made the competition in Bitcoin’s “narrative” extremely fierce. For example, the emergence of Nodemonkes has occupied the “first native 10K PFP” narrative that originally belonged to Bitcoin Frogs. Rare sats and ancient sats have also become standard configurations for wanting to create a top-tier NFT project on Bitcoin.
Technical innovation
From the most famous Quantum Cats and Pizza Ninjas to the lesser-known Shadow Hats and Fomojis, one of the main reasons why these projects have sparked extensive discussions in the English-speaking community is that they provide new talking points/artistic charm and interactive fun through technical innovations based on recursive engravings. Although the engravings currently appear as images, they are actually engraved with code, and what people see is the result of executing or rendering the code. This cannot be achieved by technical teams unfamiliar with Bitcoin.
Of course, in the end, human resources can be said to be a matter of money. Quantum Cats alone spent $66,000 to engrave its 3,333 cats. Even if grassroots entrepreneurs have the technical ability, it is difficult for them to come up with such a large sum of money to chain the engravings.
Even so, the development of the Bitcoin NFT ecosystem is still in its early stages. The aesthetics of this development direction in “technical innovation” are somewhat “esoteric”—just like generative art, it requires us to explore the stories behind it in detail to appreciate its deep charm. However, it is difficult to narrate a story with direct and elegant words, as it is all about code, code, and code when delving into it. Its appeal to non-computer enthusiasts is relatively limited. Examples like Pizza Ninjas, which provide users with easily perceptible new gameplay, are what I think is the right solution. Quantum Cats still relies heavily on the high expectations of the “Great Wizard” for support.
Outside of these two race tracks, the construction of communities and cultures is also a potential race track in Bitcoin. For example, Bitcoin Puppets has been used by some players as a benchmark against Milady.
The rapid development of Bitcoin NFTs has brought about changes in the Bitcoin NFT era. As an ordinary player, although I can no longer afford the high prices of new Bitcoin NFT projects, I am still excited about the constant emergence of fresh things.
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