Interpretation of Asteroid: Can the Cosmos Hub open-source inscription new protocol revitalize the liquidity of the entire ecosystem?
The protocol aims to allow anyone to directly and permanently publish content on the Cosmos Hub blockchain, ensuring its permanence.Author: Deep Tide TechFlow
The landscape of the inscription market continues to change.
On January 17, Dephi Labs, a subsidiary of Dephi Digital, announced on its Twitter the collaboration with the Astroport Foundation to build a project: Asteroid Protocol.
The protocol aims to allow anyone to permanently publish content directly on the Cosmos Hub blockchain, ensuring its permanence.
Currently, the protocol fully includes the Asteroid indexer, block explorer, API, Cosmos Fungible Token (CFT-20) token specification, token deployer and minting tools, as well as front-end/back-end software.
Users can also perform inscription-related operations directly on their official website.
It is worth mentioning that Asteroid did not make a big splash in its promotion but chose to launch quietly. However, the keen market still caught the opportunity, and the first official inscription RODIS on Asteroid was minted at lightning speed shortly after the platform went live, with latecomers also starting to play with other inscriptions on Asteroid.
At the same time, according to a Twitter user, the developers of the protocol indicated that RODIS would start trading on the platform within the next 4 hours, which is expected to trigger a wave of inscriptions related to the Cosmos Hub.
In the blog of Dephi Labs, they wrote:
"We believe that Cosmos Hub is likely the second-best blockchain inscription in cryptocurrency—only behind Bitcoin."
Why Cosmos Hub?
Dephi Labs believes that although Cosmos Hub is the largest Cosmos blockchain by market capitalization, it does not natively support smart contracts, NFTs, or fungible tokens in its design.
In fact, it is a powerful global computer capable of processing thousands of transactions per second, but it is essentially in standby mode.
Moreover, Dephi Labs also believes that Cosmos Hub has the potential to become a record database for any project in Cosmos and beyond. By permanently writing data there, it can not only compete with other Cosmos chains but also with Filecoin, IPFS, and Arweave—and should provide generous rewards to validators in the process.
Therefore, a good way to get Cosmos Hub moving is to introduce a native inscription protocol.
The emergence of Asteroid provides better empowerment for Cosmos Hub, including but not limited to:
Introducing new features on Cosmos Hub without affecting the core value proposition of the chain
Significantly expanding the range of possibilities for Cosmos Hub, bringing more transactions, users, and visibility
Creating new revenue streams for Cosmos Hub validators and ATOM stakers
Revitalizing and adjusting the Cosmos Hub community
Expanding the Cosmos Hub developer community by more easily integrating blockchain data into web2 applications
How to Use Asteroid
Asteroid Protocol provides a Cosmos universal meta-protocol framework that can structure and format its content for off-chain indexing and usage.
The current implementation method involves filling in a URN (Uniform Resource Name) in the transaction memo and recording any other content required by the meta-protocol in the noncriticextension_options (NCXO) field of the Cosmos SDK blockchain.
This method allows for the recording of arbitrary data up to about 550kb (theoretically up to 800kb) on Cosmos Hub, and there are no restrictions on the content of the data, so theoretically anyone can use it to build a variety of data and on-chain protocols.
Some possible ideas include social networks, blogging platforms, forums, and encrypted chats. Currently, the two key types of Asteroid protocol defined by the project are:
Arbitrary content inscription specification: With this type, users can almost directly publish any type of data that can be displayed by browsers on the Hub, from JPGs to videos, text to JSON, HTML, and even games…
Cosmos Fungible Token (CFT-20) specification: A method for deploying, minting, and transferring fungible tokens on Cosmos Hub.
$ROIDS is the first CFT-20 token launched, with a total supply of 100 million, and each person can mint up to 1000 tokens in a single transaction. Below are the minting steps provided by the official team:
Visit asteroidprotocol.io and connect your Keplr wallet,
Click on "Browse" under "CFT-20 Token",
Select ROIDS and then start minting.
However, as mentioned earlier, ROIDS has already been fully minted. Players currently have two options: to create new inscriptions themselves or to browse and mint other inscriptions available in the current market.
As shown in the image above, Asteroid provides a very simple interface for players to mint themselves; they only need to upload an image and provide a simple definition for the inscription, requiring minimal technical support.
However, when actually facing the Inscribing or minting process, there often exists the awkward situation of the webpage not loading. Therefore, after understanding the structure of the URN, we have another minting option:
Transfer 0.000001 atom to your own address, as recording data on Cosmos Hub requires an on-chain transaction. To prevent minting failures, Asteroid has also raised the minimum gas level by 40%, and these fees will be directly rewarded to Hub validators and ATOM stakers.
Fill in the memo: urn:cft20:cosmoshub-4@v1; mint$tic=ROIDS, amt=1000000000. (Using $ROIDS as an example)
In terms of browsing functionality, it can be seen that various altcoin inscriptions have also started a new round of land-grabbing, with inscriptions named BONK/DOGE/LUNA making a comeback in the ecosystem. Players can also check the percentage data on the right side of the interface at any time to observe which inscriptions are relatively popular.
However, it is important to note that currently, all these inscriptions do not have prices.
As part of the experiment, Asteroid has also drafted a cross-chain bridge plan that allows users to transfer CFT-20 tokens to smart contract chains that support IBC, enabling people to deploy LP on Astroport, which undoubtedly creates conditions for expanding liquidity. Perhaps all chains associated with Cosmos will later be influenced by the Asteroid inscription market.
However, the project team has not yet implemented this plan and does not guarantee that it will be activated.
Additionally, what are the fees for using Asteroid?
Under the current design, the fees for listing and delisting tokens are set at 0%. All market transactions incur a 2% swap fee, which is transmitted to Terra via IBC and deposited into Astroport's $xASTRO staking pool with each transaction.
Since Asteroids is open-source, anyone can create their own OTC market through Asteroids and set their own fees.
Finally, it is important to emphasize that the widely deployed inscription-based meta-protocol framework based on Cosmos Hub can be extended to almost any Cosmos SDK blockchain.
The inscriptions on Bitcoin have ignited the spark, and the inscription wars in other ecosystems are far from over.
How the market will react remains to be seen.
