One day, 3 OP_CAT protocols, is the Bitcoin ecosystem about to "change"?

Author: Cookie, BlockBeats

Yesterday might have been a day suitable for cats to bask in the sun, at least in the Bitcoin ecosystem. Within a day, we saw three Bitcoin FT protocols driven by OP_CAT—CAT 20 on Fractal, CAT NIP from the "Quantum Cats" team, and "Danny CAT 20" from the "Moto Series."

Among these, CAT 20 on Fractal has already taken off, with the price of $FB once breaking $30. As I write this article, the miner fee rate on the Fractal chain has already soared to no less than 2000 sats/vb.

The CAT NIP from the "Quantum Cats" team is only officially announced, and its implementation will have to wait for the revival of OP_CAT on the Bitcoin mainnet.

"Danny CAT 20" from the "Moto Series" saw its founder @bc1plainview claim that he was the first to propose the idea of using OP_CAT to drive Bitcoin FT protocols, just two hours after CAT 20 was released. I won't elaborate on my views here; we can discuss them later.

Let's start with the already playable CAT 20 on Fractal.

CAT20

CAT20 was not that popular initially after being discovered and spread among players, because until last night, I could still mint some at a fee rate of 300-500 sats/vb. It truly exploded in popularity when, around 11 PM last night, a new "CAT20" section suddenly appeared on Fractal's block explorer, leading to a complete FOMO.

The data here has not changed since it came out last night, so it's hard to estimate how long $CAT will last.

If the price of $FB is $30 and we mint at a rate of 2000 sats/vb, the cost per token is close to $1, meaning in this case, it is essentially "purchasing" $CAT at a market value of $21 million.

The technical documentation for CAT 20 is quite professional, and the GitHub page is well-organized, representing a genuine use of OP_CAT technology to drive the FT protocol. It is difficult for individuals or teams without in-depth research into Bitcoin technology to produce something of this level.

What does it mean to say "genuinely using OP_CAT technology to drive the FT protocol"? To answer with the official documentation, "any rules governing the token minting process are executed in smart contracts." Based on this, CAT20 has the following features (for more features, please refer to the official documentation):

• No asset burning. You can directly reuse the UTXO used for minting tokens to continue minting tokens, because essentially, CAT20 allows us to write data into the UTXO and then have the smart contract process it. In the past, we usually understood asset burning in terms of "colored coins"—if I spent a UTXO with an inscription or "colored coin," I could never retrieve it. However, CAT20 is not like that; on-chain data cannot be lost, and the contract processes changes by checking on-chain data (transactions). Our UTXO is actually spent on contract interactions, similar to ERC-20.
• Ticker can be reused. Although tickers can be reused, each token has a unique txid and output index in the genesis transaction, which together form a unique tokenid to distinguish different tokens with the same ticker.
• More freedom in minting rules. There are no human-imposed regulations; it entirely depends on how the contract is written when deploying the token. Some use cases mentioned in the official documentation include pre-sales, pre-mining, PoW mining, designated token holder minting, and staking minting, among others.

The CATNIP from the "Quantum Cats" team is quite similar to CAT20 in implementation, so in the upcoming CATNIP section, I want to focus on the potential huge impact this could have on the Bitcoin ecosystem.

CATNIP

First, I want to remind everyone that CAT NIP will only go live after OPCAT is officially revived on the Bitcoin mainnet; there will be no way to participate before that, unlike runes, which can be "rushed" by mimicking Casey's ideas. The reason is explained in the CAT 20 section above—without OPCAT, it is impossible to achieve "any rules governing the token minting process are executed in smart contracts."

When I saw CATNIP, my first thought was that @udiWertheimer seemed to finally reveal his "fangs," wanting to "jump out of Ordinals…"

Why do I say this? Let's take a look at his tweet:

He mentioned that the user experience of BRC-20 and runes has disappointed most crypto enthusiasts. Although Ordinals and inscriptions are widely considered superior to other chains' NFT implementations, BRC-20 and runes do not meet the FT protocol standards on other chains. The reason is that Bitcoin's consensus (nodes and miners) is unaware of their existence; runes must bypass restrictions through coding tricks, "deceiving" (not an attack, just a description) to be realized on the Bitcoin network. This is also why the UTXO of runes must be split; otherwise, transactions cannot achieve partial purchases, and there cannot be AMMs and liquidity pools.

If Bitcoin's consensus accepts OP_CAT, there will be no need to "deceive" anymore, and even more can be achieved.

Since the birth of Ordinals, most innovations in the Bitcoin ecosystem have revolved around Ordinals, including FT and NFT. Udi's move might split the attention of the Bitcoin ecosystem in half—one half focusing on OP_CAT and FT, and the other half on Ordinals and NFT.

If OPCAT successfully revives on the Bitcoin mainnet, one of the biggest beneficiaries will undoubtedly be the "Great Wizard" and the "Quantum Cats" team and their holders. Even now, we can guess two types of benefits for the holders of these two projects—an airdrop of the first token of CAT NIP to the "Great Wizard" and "Quantum Cats," providing direct benefits; leading the community to initiate the OPCAT revival movement and ultimately succeeding, making it difficult for others to reach the status of an NFT project, providing indirect benefits.

Besides enthusiasm, I think they also have practical reasons for the revival of OP_CAT. After all, the "Great Wizard" raised $7.5 million in funding.

The short-term follow-up developments will be interesting. Will Udi engage in a debate with Ordinals supporters (even Casey)? CAT20 on Fractal already has a first-mover advantage; will there be competition between the two, such as CAT20 aiming for the mainnet in the future? And will this trigger a new wave of "mutual non-receipt between China and foreign countries"?

Danny CAT20

Compared to the above two, this contestant really has a strong "gimmick" attribute… To be honest, after reading @bc1plainview's tweet, I was left confused—dude, how dare you say you invented CAT20 a month ago…

Without the professional technical documentation of CAT 20, and even lacking the detailed tweets explaining the implementation process like CAT NIP, there is only this Telegram screenshot. OK, that's fine; let me explain the idea expressed in this image—essentially, it just connects several fields of the Mint inscription using OPCAT, OK, I invented the OPCAT version of BRC-20.

This is completely unrelated to CAT 20. Essentially, this thing is the same as BRC-20, built on the Ordinals protocol, which is why he said it must wait until the block height of 21000 on Fractal activates the Ordinals protocol before it can be launched. Secondly, both CAT 20 and CAT NIP drive the entire FT protocol using contracts, while this Danny CAT 20 is actually driven by inscriptions, just changing the way of creating mint inscriptions to connect the words on the mint inscriptions using OP_CAT…

This is like a piece of beef; CAT20 and CATNIP are exploring how to upgrade the pot into an alchemical furnace to turn the beef into Tang Seng meat. The dude pops up and says, "You can also just fry the steak whole, or cut it into pieces and skewer it to grill; I'm on the same level as you guys…"

Enough with the gimmicky "market-making innovation."

Conclusion

CAT 20 and CAT NIP undoubtedly excite me. I had wanted to write about OPCAT before, but the technical principles were really obscure, and there were no direct use cases to explain and share with everyone. With the emergence of these two, I think we will see more OPCAT applications.

Ordinals opened the door to innovative exploration in Bitcoin, but the long and arduous journey is lonely and abnormal with only Ordinals existing; we are eager to see more explorations. For Fractal, the emergence of CAT20 is an excellent interpretation of its "experimental field" positioning, and it has given me more expectations for Fractal's future development.