Forever Live With Bitcoin
Bitcoin fell back slightly to below 22k overnight. Powell's "hawking" speech scared the market enough. The FOMC meeting in March needs to "turn the steering wheel in a hurry". Once the rhythm of slowing down the rate hike by 25bp in February is changed, the expectation of increasing the rate hike will rise again. According to survey data, the expected probability of raising interest rates by 50bp in March has exceeded 70%.
However, Powell also said that the Fed has not yet made a decision on the pace of interest rate hikes, and it depends on some macro data before the March FOMC meeting.
Yesterday (March 8), the punk digital avatar (NFT) used by the Liu Jiaolian public account has been inscribed into the Bitcoin blockchain. Jiaolian has existed forever with Bitcoin, and it will never die out.
The inscription technology used is the recently popular numbering protocol called "ordinal".
The engraved content, that is, the punk digital avatar of Jiaolian, is called the "inscription".
Ordinal inscriptions are called "digital artifacts".
20230309-01 Figure: Inscription 351181
Thousands of years later, future archaeologists come to the Bitcoin chain to unearth ancient relics of our time.
"Inscription No. 351181, Liu Jiaolian's punk avatar." - The appraiser reported to the recorder.
"Liu Jiaolian, an early participant, researcher, practitioner, and science popularizer in the Paleozoic era of cryptocurrency, wrote the book 'History of Bitcoin'..." —— AI supplemented the retrieved historical materials from the database, for the recorder's reference and confirmation.
Casey Rodarmor, the developer of the Ordinal protocol, advocated calling ordinal inscriptions "digital artefact" instead of "NFT" for a few reasons.
First of all, the acronym NFT lacks literal meaning. Even if it is expanded into Non-Fungile Token (non-homogeneous token), you still need to be explained to understand what these words refer to.
But "digital artifact" is different. Even people who have never heard of this word can divide and infer the meaning of this compound word from the literal meanings of "artifact" and "digital" as soon as they see it, without much explanation.
Secondly, NFT is usually split into two parts: the token (metadata) stored on the chain, and the content (such as a picture of bored ape) stored off the chain.
"Report! The off-chain data storage project pointed to by tokenURI has been shut down 831 years ago. The content of this bored ape NFT can no longer be retrieved." - said the appraiser.
"Understood. Archive this discovery into the Catalog of Irreparable Artifacts." - Recorder reply.
The data of ordinal inscription is 100% stored in the Bitcoin blockchain, and will always exist with the existence of the Bitcoin system.
As Rodarmor said, digital artifacts should be "complete".
Third, NFTs are usually not absolutely immutable. Many NFTs have "internal state", "supereme ownership" and even "upgradeable features", which are determined by the complexity and flexibility of smart contracts in blockchains such as Ethereum. Most ordinary users definitely do not have enough technical ability to identify the variability of the internal state of the NFT smart contract by themselves, which puts them at a huge risk of being rugged (rugging the blanket; referring to the project founders running away)..
The ordinal inscription is pure data, and once inscribed into the Bitcoin chain, it will never change. Nobody needs to worry about it having hidden, mutable internal state. This is determined by the "stateless" nature of the Bitcoin chain.
Digital artifacts are thus "immutable," Rodarmor said.
Therefore, Rodarmor concluded that NFT is not a digital artifact, and digital artifact is not an NFT. They have similarities, but more importantly, significant differences between them.
The immortal ledger of Bitcoin not only records the economic activities of human civilization, but also records the cultural activities of human civilization in different periods.
We cherish the cultural relics unearthed from San Xing Dui 3000-5000 years ago not because they are exquisite and beyond imagination, nor because they have any "practical value", but because they were built thousands of years ago. The cultural relics of human civilization activities are our understanding and memory of our early ancestors.
20230309-02 Figure: San Xing Dui Cultural Relics
In 5023, or 7023, the descendants of our descendants will also find some relevant clues about the unique cultural atmosphere of this era around 2023 from the profile avatar of the punk Jiaolian inscribed by the writer today.
Obviously, they will use this as an entry point to excavate and study the historical traces related to this Jiaolian inscription. For example, the articles, books, thoughts and opinions, codes and products built by Jiaolian, and even, who were the people that have interacted with him, in which communities they interacted, what were the names of these communities, and what ancient community tools or communication tools were they using, organizational forms and characteristics, and so on.
Maybe 99.9% of these will not exist after thousands of years, they will be wiped out, and even the records will not be found. But the remaining 0.1% of the clues and information will become the clues and evidence of the Jiaolian inscription, making archaeologists and the general public feel curious, interesting and excited.
Therefore, starting today, every line of text, every piece of code, and every activity has a different historical meaning when facing the future 3000-5000 years.
20230309-03 Figure: Du Fu's Poem
Du Fu once said, "Literary works are matters of all time, failure and success are known in the speck of mind." The same is true for articles, and so is code. Both are "writings". Standing at the beginning of the long history of three to five thousand years in the future, think about whether what you have written can stand the test of a long time, and whether a few words can still be commemorated and even be read (text) or used(code) after thousands of years.
Compared with this, the momentary gains and losses in this life, and the abundance and poverty of external possessions are all trivial matters that are not worth mentioning.
An ingenious design is required for an inscription to be etched into Bitcoin's blockchain forever. This ingenious design is the ordinal protocol.
Ordinal does not change any characteristics of Bitcoin. It just makes clever use of what Bitcoin already has.
This use is groundbreaking.
Friends who have listened carefully to Liu Jiaolian’s Bitcoin Principles audio courses [link: https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/rDk8jXqSIM5Byzb9081zyw ] know that the most important thing about Bitcoin invented by Satoshi Nakamoto is to redefine and realize the concept of "time" - in the "metaverse" of Bitcoin.
But the Bitcoin world, which only has "time", cannot actually be called a "metaverse" - because there is no global concept of "space".
We only have a local spatial concept of "block size".
Until early 2022, Rodarmor invented the ordinal protocol.
Section 3 of the Bitcoin white paper written by Satoshi Nakamoto "Timestamp Server" defines the time for Bitcoin. Rodarmor's ordinal protocol defines the space for Bitcoin.
Having Time multiplied by space, we have since then obtained a complete cosmology of the Bitcoin world, defining the "metaverse" of Bitcoin.
The Ordinal protocol defines "space" by cleverly utilizing Satoshi, the smallest counting unit of Bitcoin designed by Satoshi Nakamoto. Of course, the unit name "Satoshi" was chosen by later communities to commemorate Satoshi Nakamoto. Satoshi Nakamoto only designed Bitcoin with an accuracy of 1/100,000,000 and stored it in the Bitcoin blockchain as a positive integer.
1/100,000,000 BTC is 1 Satoshi. 1 satoshi, abbreviated as 1 sat.
It is a wonderful idea to use Satoshi as the coordinate system of Bitcoin’s metaverse space dimension.
From the first coinbase transaction (coinbase tx) in the first block to produce the first batch of "Satoshi", until the last coinbase transaction in the last block having block reward at the beginning of 2140 produced the last batch of "Satoshi". .
Satoshi Nakamoto has already set an upper limit for the total amount of Bitcoin: 2099999997690000 Satoshis. (approximately 2100 trillion Satoshis)
That is, the well-known upper limit of the total amount of about 21 million bitcoins. Never more.
In the first 210,000 blocks of Bitcoin, 50 Bitcoins are issued for each block of coinbase transactions, which is 5 billion Satoshis. After that, 25 Bitcoins will be issued for each block of coinbase transactions, which is 2.5 billion Satoshis. ...
This is the origin of the so-called halving of Bitcoin production every 4 years.
Therefore, the extension of the scale of this coordinate system is beginning fast and then slow, getting slower and slower. And around the first half of 2140, stop extending.
Coordinate scale: 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, ... ... ... ..., 2099999997689997, 2099999997689998, 2099999997689999.
It starts at 0 and ends at 2099999997689999. Extending a little in approximately every 10 minutes.
Ordinal is to order and number all 2099999997690000 Satoshis, as the scale of the coordinate position.
Each inscription is anchored at a certain coordinate position. For example, Jiaolian is located at 1835811752116542 Satoshi in the Bitcoin metaverse.
20230309-04 Figure: Bitcoin coordinates of Liu Jiaolian
Rodarmor also designed a variety of interesting representations for the scale value of this coordinate system. For example, these representations are equivalent:
The position of the punk Jiaolian inscription on the Bitcoin chain: 1835811752116542 Satoshi, or 628649.502116542 percentile, or 0°208649′1673″502116542‴ degree, or 87.41960733980648% percentile. It can also be abbreviated as avwqbsfiz in alphabetic nomenclature; or use traditional block notation to locate block height 628649 offset 502116542; and so on.
The total amount of Satoshi is limited. The coordinate scale is limited. Space in the universe is limited. Finite (the total amount of satoshi is limited) boundless (satoshi can be transferred all the time, and the blockchain can be extended), which seems to be very similar to our universe. (Einstein's point of view: our universe is "finite and boundless")
Finite, this Rodarmor did not talk about. But this is a very significant difference between ordinal inscriptions and NFTs such as Ethereum.
It means that, unlike Ethereum and other NFTs that can be issued infinitely, the total amount of inscriptions that can be permanently inscribed on the Bitcoin chain has an upper limit.
Although 2100 trillion is an incomparably huge number, it is finite after all.
If it is finite, it is even more scarce. The scarcer it is, the more precious it becomes.
The time and space of the bitcoin metaverse defined in this way is very similar to our real universe, that is, the unity of time and space according to Einstein's theory.
Although from our intuitive experience, time is time and space is space. But in Einstein's general theory of relativity, time is space, and space is time.
The Satoshi space by Ordinal is actually the same as the block time by Satoshi Nakamoto.
Look at the spatial position of the Bitcoin metaverse where Liu Jiaolian is located: 1835811752116542 Satoshi.
The time source of this satoshi is eternally determined, that is, it can be traced back to the block time of its coinbase transaction, and its recorded real-world time stamp.
The coinbase transaction of 1835811752116542 Satoshi anchored by the punk Jiaolian is located at block height 628649, corresponding to the real-world timestamp contained in it at 1:21:01 UTC time on May 3, 2020.
No matter how the punk Jiaolian is transferred later, the coordinates of this Satoshi and the moment of its birth will never change.
Bitcoin's bookkeeping model is the stateless UTXO model, which is very different from the account model of Ethereum and other chains (accounts are equivalent to internal states). It is thanks to the UTXO model that the above characteristics can be perfectly realized.
Well, I believe that all readers now have a basic understanding of the ordinal protocol and its inscriptions, and understand its technical principles and unique features.
You can see the inscriptions on the punk Jiaolian through any ordinal viewing tool that can read the Bitcoin chain. for example:
https://ordinals.com/inscription/f19c61ed4ff311acf5522b8285e337437c938ed57fd7a3d6ebab07b55daac903i0
Although there is still controversy over whether the Bitcoin blockchain ledger should carry these non-financial and cultural data, you might as well look at innovative things with an open mind, try it, understand it, and don't rush to judge it. Time will tell.
Extra: The full book of "History of Bitcoin" has been released on leanpub https://leanpub.com/history-of-bitcoin
nostr: npub1dlwqsauewd56dekrnuxh8xukvg7pgeelwp39qah8ts5x28tmf7pqp5tcp3 twitter: @liujiaolian https://twitter.com/liujiaolian
(Disclaimer: The content of this article does not constitute any investment advice. Cryptocurrency is a very high-risk product, and there is a risk of going zero at any time. Please participate carefully and be responsible for yourself.)