Everything you need to know about SRC-20.

By Karen, Foresight News

Amid the controversy sparked by Bitcoin Core developer Luke Dashjr's removal of Ordinals and the ensuing uproar in the Bitcoin community, OKX CEO Xu Mingxing is considering whether this will force the Bitcoin inscription community to turn to the possibility of SRC-20 or Lightning Network Taproot assets, while also insisting that OKX will continue to build to support the Bitcoin ecosystem.

Despite Luke Dashjr's subsequent statement that "we don't need to eliminate all inscriptions to benefit Bitcoin" and that "Ordinals is just a scam," this wave is extending to the Bitcoin Stamps protocol based on SRC-20 and SRC-20.

What is Bitcoin Stamps?

Bitcoin Stamps, created by software engineer Mike In Space, can embed image data into Bitcoin transactions and number them based on transaction timestamps. Specifically, the data is stored directly in the Bare Multisig of Bitcoin's unspent transaction outputs (UTXO) rather than in the witness data, as with Ordinals.

Stamps also introduce "Key Burn" key destruction technology, which assigns the spending key of a "fake multisig" to a burn address when casting Stamps, making the spendable output effectively unspendable. In other words, the redemption key is not held by the artist, but is assigned to the burn address, addressing concerns about the artist's spendable output.

Mike In Space stated that this means the data is saved in a way that cannot be pruned from the full node, thus permanently preserving the data.

The implementation of Bitcoin Stamps encodes the binary content of the image as a Base64 string, places this string as a suffix in the transaction description key "STAMP:", and then broadcasts it to the Bitcoin ledger using the Counterparty protocol.

When discussing Bitcoin Stamps, it is necessary to mention Counterparty. In 2014, Robert Dermody, Adam Krellenstein, and Evan Wagner introduced the Counterparty protocol, which extends Bitcoin's functionality by writing data into the blank space of normal Bitcoin blockchain data blocks, opening up endless possibilities for Bitcoin.

Bitcoin Stamps can be decoded directly from the original Bitcoin transactions. To improve processing speed and eliminate the need for indexing, the original Bitcoin transactions are decoded using the Counterparty API, and once decoded, the image is uploaded to stampchain.io for use through a web application, aiming to enable anyone to decode these transactions and interpret the underlying image data for presentation on any application.

What is SRC-20?

SRC-20 is a specification based on Bitcoin Stamps, mimicking the BRC-20, as initially broadcast on the blockchain using Counterparty, but starting from block 796,000, the SRC-20 specification was modified to encode SRC-20 transactions directly onto BTC to reduce network costs and eliminate the use of Counterparty.

SRC-20 transactions must be signed by the address holding the SRC-20 token balance and broadcast to Bitcoin, as a means of verifying ownership. The source and destination addresses are embedded in the BTC transaction created by the user's wallet.

Some requirements for SRC-20 tokens are:

• Token length between 1 and 5 characters;
• Supported characters include word characters, i.e., alphanumeric characters and underscore, special characters (~!@#$%^&*()_+=>?), and printable emoji symbols (U+1F300 to U+1F5FF);
• The third multisig public key must be a valid Keyburn address;
• Case insensitive;
• Maximum mint/transfer quantity: uint64_max 18446744073709551615.

According to Coinranking's summary of SRC-20 token data, the current highest market value is for STAMP, at around 38 million USD, followed by KEVIN (with a market value of around 8.8 million USD).

In addition, there is a possibility of "pruning" Ordinals (which can be achieved by deleting old witness data nodes), although the likelihood is low. Bitcoin Stamps, on the other hand, is permanent because it requires data to be stored on all nodes.

In terms of related infrastructure, Ordinals already has a first-mover advantage, while the infrastructure related to Bitcoin Stamps is not yet complete, and there is little support or integration from mainstream trading platforms. Whether it can take over from Ordinals and inject more vitality into Bitcoin will require further infrastructure development and support.

Summary of Related Tools

Stampchain (Bitcoin Stamps main directory): https://stampchain.io/

Stampscan (SRC-20 transaction, minting, and analysis website): https://www.stampscan.xyz/

Kaleidoscope XCP (Stamps directory): https://kaleidoscopexcp.com/stamps/

Rarestamp (Stamps minting and trading marketplace, created by Universelle): https://www.rarestamp.xyz/

OpenStamp (Stamps marketplace and minting platform): https://twitter.com/btcopenstamp

Counterparty blockchain explorer: XChain (xchain.io)

References:

https://github.com/mikeinspace/stamps/blob/main/Key-Burn.md

https://github.com/mikeinspace/stamps/blob/main/BitcoinStamps.md

https://github.com/hydren-crypto/stampchain/blob/main/docs/src20.md

https://trustmachines.co/learn/what-is-the-src-20-token-standard/

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