Lifting the inscription of the second spring, opening the new narrative of L2, why did the surge of ETHS become a sensation across the internet?

Author: Shilian Finance

When will inscriptions have their second spring? Once a hope, it now seems to touch reality!

Ethscriptions (abbreviated as eths), which mimics BRC-20 Tokens, has been trading sideways at a price range of 270-300 U for a long time, but suddenly surged on the evening of October 8, doubling to 800 U.

This is a new type of Ethereum scaling solution proposed by Tom Lehman (pseudonym Middlemarch) on August 8. It employs ORDI-like inscription technology and utilizes CALL DATA expansion to achieve low gas fees on the Ethereum mainnet and high-dimensional ecological applications.

Since it was launched two months ago and had a lackluster performance afterward, why did it suddenly explode now? What marketing strategies were employed behind the scenes?

• New Narrative for L2, ETHS Captures This Year's Trend

The core of Eths is the Ethscriptions Virtual Machine (ESC VM), which can be compared to the EVM (Ethereum Virtual Machine). The smart contracts in the ESC VM, called "Dumb Contracts," allow eths to break free from the limitations of inscriptions as NFTs for speculation, entering the realm of functionality and practicality, and officially competing with foundational layers and L2 solutions.

Recently, the testnet for ESC VM went live, taking ETHS onto a new trajectory. In the ESIP-4 proposal, Ethereum inscriptions introduced a virtual machine. This is a new protocol built on Ethscriptions. The ESC VM endows ETHS with computational capabilities. Additionally, ETHS introduced a contract system known as "Dumb Contracts," allowing users to interact with inscriptions.

https://docs.ethscriptions.com/esips/esip-4-the-ethscriptions-virtual-machine

The ESC VM provides an environment for Dumb Contracts similar to EVM. Dumb Contracts can execute two commands: deploy (create a new contract) and call (invoke state change functions of existing contracts). The interaction with such contracts is a relatively unique form of interaction. Because they are stored via inscriptions, they bypass the execution and storage costs of EVM (transactions are stored on-chain using the calldata field).

This also allows Dumb Contracts to incur costs far lower than smart contracts. After the upgrade to ESIP-5 on October 9, the gas fee for each transfer dropped to around 0.05 U, making gas interactions cheaper than many L2s.

Thus, eths represents another approach for Ethereum Layer 2; Layer 2 is a separate chain and can have backdoors. Eths trades on the Ethereum mainnet, with gas fees as cheap as those on Layer 2, allowing swaps, DeFi, and gamefi to be implemented on eths, which is safer and more decentralized than Layer 2 (Layer 2 computes off-chain, and servers can be shut down).

(Three development stages of eths)

This can satisfy applications that wish to develop on the mainnet while keeping gas fees low, expanding Ethereum's development.

Currently, various Layer 2 projects have market capitalizations in the tens of billions of dollars, while eths only has a market cap of over ten million dollars, which can be considered in the early stages of value discovery. What will surpass L2 is not L2 itself, but new technologies like ETHS. The market needs a new narrative, users need new products, and funds need new outlets, and thus the hype is created!

• Pumping is the Hard Truth, Traffic Dominance, Rapidly Boosting Project Popularity

What is the best way for crypto projects to seek development and tell their narratives?

The answer is pumping!

As long as the pump is successful, a new track will emerge, and various project parties will swarm in. The hot pumps of gamefi and DeFi in the past were indispensable. Eths has skillfully utilized this, recognizing the essence and abandoning resistance.

Moreover, during the rise of eths, there were instances of bots and other volume-boosting tools creating a "prosperous scene," with many KOLs and even ordinary accounts posting tweets with the #eths keyword, leading to significantly higher traffic. Everyone fully utilized this traffic code, amplifying the momentum, and within just a day or two, content related to eths flooded the internet, further igniting people's FOMO mentality, fearing to miss out on the rare opportunity to profit in a bear market.

(Answers from AI)

Of course, during the development of eths over the past two months, a strong consensus community has gradually formed, with many community members communicating with the founder in English, and those with media resources organizing spaces. Individuals contribute energy within their capabilities, embodying the original energy of decentralization and web3 DAO.

• Development Limitations, Perhaps a Flash in the Pan

Firstly, the innovation is insufficient; the Ethscriptions protocol has existed since 2016, with developers continuously calling data to store custom data/art. They primarily achieved this by breaking through the boundaries of the tools/technologies of the time, which is not an ideal way to store artworks. Although access is possible, it is not allocated to tokens, which is why Ethscriptions attempts to solve this issue through off-chain consensus (fairness).

Then, in terms of functionality, state data has more comprehensive features, such as runtime dynamics or programmability of art. Compared to Inscriptions (IS), IS has much less likelihood of being trimmed than eths. IS also has more storage nodes than eths (of course, eths can be called by ETH native contracts, while IS cannot, and neither can execute runtime functions). Additionally, due to the 1M block limit, eths can currently only upload images and text, but not video games.

Other limitations include:

1. The functions of "Dumb Contracts" are not instantaneously responsive, meaning that if you want to send ETH through a Dumb Contract, you must go through a bridge-like process.

(1) The user sends ETH to the Smart Contract.

(2) The Smart Contract creates an ethscription, sends a call to the Dumb Contract, notifying it that the Smart Contract has received ETH.

(3) The Dumb Contract verifies whether the Smart Contract is on the trusted Smart Contracts list, then sends the asset to the user.

2. Limitations of openness and universality; eths does not allow arbitrary creation of Dumb Contracts, lacking programmability. Its code is defined along with other Ethscriptions Protocol rules during the ESIP process.

In this case, although both eths and L2 are addressing Ethereum's scalability and cost issues, some well-defined, simple requirements are better suited to be solved through ESC VM. Eths belongs to the "small but beautiful" type. L2 solutions have better openness and universality, larger capacity, and are more three-dimensional. At least, this is the case for now.

Currently, the official stance of eths is that the ESC VM is not a broadly defined Layer 2; it is more like a computational layer built on the Ethereum mainnet. However, unlike Ordinals, the Ethereum community is clearly open to this innovation and experiment. As the ETH upgrade brings systematic optimizations, eths will also evolve and expand more powerful functions, with infrastructure becoming increasingly complete. Will Ethscriptions lead the next wave of technological trends? Let's wait and see.

Finally, here are a few related websites:

Eths secondary trading market:

https://www.etch.market/market/token?category=token\&collectionName=erc-20%20ethsETHS

Inscriptions holding query:

https://eths-check.streamlit.app/ETHS

Eths official Twitter:

https://twitter.com/eths_official

Eths community Telegram group:

https://t.me/ethscriptionsglobal