Beyond Loot: Exploring the Infinite Possibilities of the Spore DOB-0 Protocol

Author: btcman.bit

Recently, a Spore DOB-0 protocol on Spore's GitHub has caught my great interest.

Spore is a universal digital object creation protocol deployed on the CKB blockchain. It supports various content types such as images, links, videos, audio, text, and code (e.g., Lua scripts, Markdown), and the generated DOB (Digital Object) is not only immutable but also fully stored on-chain.

The Spore DOB-0 protocol is the first protocol built on the foundation of Spore and is more application-layer oriented. Its distinction from Spore is similar to that between the HTTP protocol and the TCP protocol. According to the description, this Spore DOB-0 protocol aims to create a flexible DNA byte rendering process, or more simply, to introduce how to parse the DNA of Spore DOBs. Although the content of this protocol is brief, its potential is immeasurable.

Implementation of the Spore DOB-0 Protocol

The Spore DOB-0 protocol sets a new standard for the content type "text," which is to store the most important thing of the DOB in the CKB blockchain's Cell — DNA, rather than ordinary text. Then, the Decoder on the chain decodes the DNA according to the Pattern, and finally renders and displays it to the user on the front end.

Specifically:

1. When a user mints a DOB, the on-chain contract reads the current block height and Cell ID, hashes them, and the resulting hash value becomes the DNA of that DOB.
2. The Decoder deployed on the CKB blockchain decodes the DNA according to the Pattern predefined by the creator or artist. The Pattern is a segment of bytes that can be binary or string, in any format, determined by the Decoder. The creator or artist needs to define and upload it before the user mints the DOB. The Pattern defines which bytes represent which attributes, how to assign values, and specifies the code location of the Decoder, etc.
3. Finally, the front end (wallet, browser, trading platform, etc.) renders the DOB based on the content decoded by the Decoder and displays it to the user.

From the above process, we can see that for creators and artists, they need to create Patterns and Clusters in advance. In the Pattern, creators and artists need to define and assign various attributes of the DOB, so the Pattern is like a codebook that determines how the Decoder decodes the DNA of the DOB. It is reported that to lower the user threshold and facilitate operations, the development team will later launch a tool that allows creators and artists to directly create a Cluster Cell containing the Pattern on-chain, similar to filling in the blanks. The Cluster is akin to the concept of a Collection but is more flexible and independent. By creating a Cluster and filling in the corresponding ID into the DOB, one can mint a Spore DOB belonging to that Cluster, so the Cluster can also be seen as an index for Spore DOBs.

For the protocol developers, they need to deploy the Decoder contract on the CKB blockchain in advance and make its address public. The Decoder acts as a decipherer or decryption agent, whose main responsibility is to crack the information expressed by the DNA string according to the instructions in the "codebook" (i.e., the aforementioned Pattern). Since CKB is a permissionless public chain, it is foreseeable that as more and more DOBs adopt the Spore DOB-0 protocol standard, an increasing number of developers will deploy various Decoders, even customizing Decoders for specific projects for creators and artists to choose from.

For users, they only need to know the Cluster ID published by the creator or artist and fill in the ID when minting the DOB to mint a Spore DOB belonging to that Cluster, which is very simple and easy to operate.

Originating from Loot, Surpassing Loot

The inspiration for the Spore DOB-0 protocol comes from Loot. Loot is adventurer gear that is randomly generated and stored on the Ethereum blockchain, consisting of just a few lines of text, without values, images, or anything else, intentionally omitted to allow others to interpret and use them in any way.

Loot writes the attribute pool, or Pattern, into the contract, meaning that the Decoder and Pattern are tightly coupled, so one Loot contract can only correspond to one Loot NFT theme. The Spore DOB-0 protocol decouples the Pattern and Decoder, further enhancing composability; the same set of Decoders can have completely different DOB themes with different Patterns.

Loot only has one dimension in random number generation, which is to generate a random number, and then all attribute pools use this one random number. When minting a DOB through the Spore DOB-0 protocol, a DNA string is generated, and different attribute pools in the Pattern will use specific segments of the DNA as random numbers, broadening the dimensions of randomness.

Additionally, in terms of overall design philosophy, Spore DOB is clearly more beautiful than Loot.

First, minting a DOB requires obtaining CKB tokens as "raw materials," and melting a DOB allows for the retrieval of the occupied CKB. This gives the DOB both a body and a soul, as well as a concept of life and death.

Secondly, the world consists of time and space, and PoW is essentially a decentralized clock, while a Cell is a space that can store any content type. The combination of PoW and Cell constructs a decentralized universe on the CKB blockchain. In this decentralized universe, when a DOB is born, it hashes the time and space (block height and Cell ID), and the result is its "birth chart" (i.e., DNA). Therefore, there is a certain randomness in minting a DOB through the Spore DOB-0 protocol, echoing the randomness in the process of life forms' birth in real life.

One characteristic of hash functions is collision resistance, meaning that changing just one character of the input information will produce a completely different hash value, ensuring that the DNA of each DOB is unique, just as the DNA of each life form in the real world is unique.

The word "Cell" in Chinese means cell, which stores DNA, containing the most important information of the organism. By cultivating cells, we ultimately obtain a life form, which can continue to pair, reproduce, and evolve. The DOB minted through the Spore DOB-0 protocol possesses strong flexibility and composability, allowing users to enrich the content expressed by the DNA according to their preferences and showcase it in the community through various means such as painting, modeling, music, and textual descriptions. They can even integrate AI large models on the front end, allowing the DOB to evolve continuously with the ongoing iterations of the large model.

Spore has many advantages over Loot, such as on-chain transfer of DOBs being free of transaction fees (miner fees), and each DOB having CKB tokens as value support, etc. It is recommended to read the previous article “Understanding the Digital Object Creation Protocol Spore on the CKB Chain” and refer to the official documentation of Spore, which will not be elaborated here.

Future Prospects of the Spore DOB-0 Protocol

DeFi Lego blocks have made everyone aware of the powerful potential of "composability." Different DeFi protocols can be combined and integrated, solidifying and expanding the boundaries and heights of the DeFi world. The Spore DOB-0 protocol separates the Pattern, DNA, and Decoder in its design, which brings flexibility and composability, providing infinite possibilities for subsequent ecological development.

"One gives birth to two, two gives birth to three, and three gives birth to all things." Since the DNA only preserves the most important attributes of the DOB and is highly abstract, the DOB minted based on the Spore DOB-0 protocol is the "one" mentioned earlier. Anyone can continuously build, improve, enrich, and supplement this "one," creating secondary and tertiary creations based on the DOB: those who like images can feed the decoded results of the DOB DNA to AI drawing tools like Midjourney to generate images in various styles; those who enjoy film and television can input the decoded results into AI video tools like Sora to bring the DOB to life in film and television works; those who appreciate literature can set the DOB as a character in a novel, and so on.

Moreover, the DOB minted through the Spore DOB-0 protocol also possesses openness and scalability. Other blockchain projects can reference these DOBs (Cells are referenceable storage units), for example, a full-chain game or a GameFi project can directly reference DOBs as the underlying database for character, weapon, and equipment information in the game project. Furthermore, the same DOB can be used in different games, overcoming the limitations of traditional Web2 games where items and weapons cannot be used across games.

In summary, openness, flexibility, composability, and scalability give the Spore DOB-0 protocol infinite imaginative space, allowing for the construction of various possibilities. No one can know exactly what will happen in the future, but the ecological development based on the Spore DOB-0 protocol is certainly worth looking forward to.