An Ordinals-like protocol emerges on Ethereum

An Ethereum user has introduced Ethscriptions, a protocol that allows creating and transmitting digital artifacts in the network, analogous to the Ordinals inscriptions on Bitcoin.

Introducing Ethscriptions: a new way of creating and sharing digital artifacts on Ethereum using transaction calldata.https://t.co/XfQ7RdtblD

ALSO: Introducing Ethereum Punks. Because why should all non-contract Punk collecting happen on Bitcoin?https://t.co/d3Ycwbdc2Z…

— Middlemarch (@dumbnamenumbers) June 16, 2023

The protocol was launched by Tom Leman, co-founder and former CEO of the online music encyclopedia Genius. In his words, the launch was successful — in less than 18 hours, almost 30,000 Ethscriptions were created, including a copy of the popular NFT collection CryptoPunks.

«Interesting, the first time since 2015 I’ve seen Ethereum copy Bitcoin», — commented the founder of the social Web3-platform Console Kris Castig.

Interesting, first time I’ve seen ETH copy BTC since 2015 ?

— castig (@castig) June 16, 2023

The protocol provides the ability to record arbitrary files in the Ethereum blockchain, not exceeding 96 KB in size. Initially it can decode only images, but in the future this function will expand to all types of inscriptions.

Leman leveraged calldata storage in the EVM, which transmits data via a smart-contract call or a transaction.    

«Any successful Ethereum transaction whose input data (UTF-8 encoded) are unique with a valid URI creates an inscription. Duplicate content is ignored», — explained the developer.

Users must send 0 ETH to the artifact-creation address, placing in the Hex data field a file converted to hexadecimal format.

According to Leman, the use of the protocol is cheaper and more decentralised than contract storage. 

The solution guarantees the “global uniqueness” of all Ethscriptions. To ensure this quality, the programmer is working on launching an open-source inscription indexer. 

«I have many other plans to expand the protocol that I can’t wait to share, but the base must come first», — emphasized Leman.

In May, developers of Ordinals Market and Bitcoin Miladys introduced the BRC-721E standard, which enables the migration of Ethereum-NFT to ERC-721 on a Bitcoin-based protocol.