Overview of Bitcoin Asset Issuance New Protocol

1. Rune Alpha

Rune Alpha has recently gained popularity mainly due to the heat of the "rune" concept. The "rune" was originally proposed by Casey and gained attention because of BTC Core core developer Luke's opposition to "inscription." The essential difference between "rune" and "inscription" lies in the storage location: the former is stored in UTXO, while the latter exists in the isolated witness data of Bitcoin scripts.

However, Rune Alpha, while claiming to be "rune", is actually a new inscription protocol based on the ordinals protocol version 0.11.1, which differs from the "rune" concept proposed by Casey according to its white paper. Nevertheless, Rune Alpha has successfully attracted attention by leveraging the popularity of "rune". The minting cost of the protocol's first token $cook is about a dozen dollars, and its current off-market price has risen to around 400 dollars, with a formal trading market yet to be launched.

2. CBRC-20

CBRC-20 is a proposal for an efficient meta-protocol standard for fungible tokens on Bitcoin, leveraging the new features introduced in Ordinals version 0.10+. Compared to BRC-20, CBRC-20 has implemented the following optimizations:

1. Reduce recording costs: Inscription costs have decreased by about 10 times.
2. Simplified Index: All information can be obtained directly from the inscription envelope.
3. MIME data flexibility: allows the use of any MIME data for operations.
4. Compatible with higher versions of Ordinals: New features of version 0.10 and above can be utilized.

The CBRC-20 team has innovatively enabled its token to go live on trading markets, such as directly launching the inscription SWAP and showcasing it on mainstream platforms through a browser extension. Recently, the team also initiated the OSMOSIS experiment, deploying the first meta-meta protocol inscription $SYMM, achieving simultaneous inscriptions across multiple protocols.

Three, BTNS

Broadcast Token Naming System (BTNS) is an ecosystem built by early Bitcoin participant @jdogresorg. Its core idea is to achieve the issuance of native asset tokens and NFTs by appending broadcast signals to on-chain Bitcoin transactions.

BTNS-420 is a token protocol standard built on BTNS, integrating features such as asset issuance and transfer. Compared to inscriptions and runes, the main features of BTNS include:

1. Does not occupy or change Bitcoin itself, more in line with the ecological concept of Bitcoin.
2. Asset minting based on broadcasting is more open and transparent.
3. Fully open source, developed based on the original characteristics of Bitcoin, with less controversy.

The value of BTNS is mainly reflected in:

• Achieved asset issuance on the Bitcoin main chain without occupying the total supply of Bitcoin.
• Provides a fairer way to acquire assets, such as airdrops, fair indices, etc.

Currently, the market development progress of BTNS has temporarily stagnated, reportedly because the main developer is on vacation.

Summary

Recently, the new Bitcoin protocols have shown a trend of diversified development. Rune Alpha and CBRC-20 are still based on the inscription concept, but CBRC-20 is more innovative. BTNS proposes a grander vision, belonging to the meta-protocol category, achieving asset issuance through broadcasting, which avoids occupying Bitcoin itself. These new protocols bring more possibilities to the Bitcoin ecosystem, but their long-term development effects remain to be observed.