Writing: Karen, Foresight News

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

Despite Luke Dashjr later stating "we don't need to remove all inscriptions to benefit Bitcoin" and his view that "Ordinals is just a scam," this fervor is extending to SRC-20 and the Bitcoin Stamps protocol it is based on.

What are Bitcoin Stamps?

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

Stamps also introduce "Key Burn" key destruction technology, where the spending key of the "fake multisig" is assigned to a burn address when creating Stamps, making the spendable output effectively unspendable. This means that the redemption key is not held by the artist, but is assigned to a burn address, addressing concerns about the artist's ability to spend the output.

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

Speaking of Bitcoin Stamps, one cannot fail to mention Counterparty. In 2014, Robert Dermody, Adam Krellenstein, and Evan Wagner introduced the Counterparty protocol, which extends the functionality of Bitcoin by writing data into the blank spaces 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 Counterparty API is used to decode the original Bitcoin transactions. 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 in 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 from block 796,000, the SRC-20 specification was modified to encode SRC-20 transactions directly onto BTC to reduce network costs and no longer use Counterparty.

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

The 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 amount: 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 (by deleting nodes of old witness data), 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 Bitcoin Stamps can take over from Ordinals and inject more vitality into Bitcoin will require further infrastructure development and support.

Friendly reminder: The trading volume of SRC-20 on Bitcoin Stamps is low and is still in the early stages of development. Users are advised to participate with caution.

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 market, created by Universelle): https://www.rarestamp.xyz/
• OpenStamp (Stamps market 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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