Three OP_CAT protocols a day, is the Bitcoin ecosystem going to change?

Yesterday might have been a good day for cats to come out and bask in the sun, at least, in the Bitcoin ecosystem. Within a day, we saw three Bitcoin FT protocols driven by OP_CAT - CAT20 on Fractal, CATNIP of the "Quantum Cat" team, and "Danny CAT20" of the "Moto series".

Of the three, CAT20 on Fractal has already been put into use, with the price of $FB once exceeding $30. When I wrote this article, the miner fee rate on the Fractal chain was already as high as 2000 sats/vb.

CATNIP of the "Quantum Cat" team is only officially announced, and its implementation will have to wait until the revival of OP_CAT on the Bitcoin mainnet.

Danny CAT20 of the "Moto Series" is the founder of Motoswap and OP_NET, @bc1plainview, who said that he was the first to propose the idea of OP_CAT driving the Bitcoin FT protocol 2 hours after CAT20 came out. I won't go into detail about my opinion here, and we'll talk about it when we discuss it later.

Let's start with the already playable CAT20 on Fractal.

CAT20

CAT20 was not that popular after it was discovered and spread by players in the early days, because until last night, I could still hit some with a fee of 300-500 sats/vb. The real reason for the explosion was that at almost 11 o'clock last night, a "CAT20" column suddenly appeared on Fractal's block browser, so I was completely FOMO.

The data here has not been moved since it came out last night, so it is difficult to calculate how long it will take for $CAT to be completed

If the price of $FB is 30 U, and the fee rate is raised to 2000 sats/vb, the cost of a single ticket is close to 1 U, which means that in this case, $CAT is actually "purchased" according to the market value of 21 million US dollars.

CAT20's technical documentation is quite professional, and its Github page is quite neat. It is a FT protocol that actually uses OP_CAT technology to drive it. It is difficult to come up with something of this level if it is not an individual or team that has deeply studied Bitcoin technology.

What is "FT protocol that actually uses OP_CAT technology to drive it"? To answer in the words of the official document, "Any rules that manage the token casting process are executed in smart contracts." Based on this, CAT20 has these features (for more features, please refer to official documents)

- No asset burning. You can directly use the UTXO used to cast tokens to continue casting tokens, because in essence, CAT20 is equivalent to us writing data in UTXO and then the smart contract handles it. In the past, we usually understand asset burning in the sense of "colored coins" - if I spend a UTXO with an inscription or "colored coin", I can never get it back. But CAT20 is not like this. It is impossible to lose on-chain data. The contract handles changes by checking on-chain data (transactions). Our UTXO is actually spent on contract interactions, like ERC-20.

- Tickers are repeatable. Although tickers are repeatable, the txid and output index of each token in the genesis transaction are different. Together, they constitute a unique tokenid for a token, which distinguishes different tokens with the same ticker.

- The casting rules are more free. There are no artificial regulations. It depends entirely on how the contract is written when the token is deployed. Some use cases mentioned in the official documentation include pre-sale, pre-mining, PoW mining, casting by designated token holders, pledge casting, etc.

The CATNIP of the "Quantum Cat" team is similar to CAT20 in implementation, so in the following CATNIP section, I would like to focus on the potential huge impact of this thing on the Bitcoin ecosystem.

CATNIP

First of all, I want to remind everyone that CATNIP will only be launched after the official resurrection of OP_CAT on the Bitcoin mainnet. Before that, there will be no way to participate. This is not like Runes, which can be "preempted" by imitating Casey's ideas. The reason is actually explained in the CAT20 section above - without OP_CAT, it is impossible to achieve "any rules governing the token casting process are executed in smart contracts."

My first thought when I saw CATNIP was that @udiWertheimer seemed to have finally shown his "fangs" and he wanted to "jump out of Ordinals"...

Why do you say that? Take a look at his tweets:

He said that the user experience of BRC-20 and runes disappointed most Crypto enthusiasts. Although Ordinals and inscriptions are widely regarded as NFT implementations superior to other chains, BRC-20 and runes do not meet the FT protocol standards on other chains. The reason is that Bitcoin consensus (nodes and miners) do not know their existence, and Runes must bypass restrictions through code tricks and "cheat" (not attack, just a description) to be implemented on the Bitcoin network. This is why the UTXO of Runes must be cut, otherwise transactions cannot achieve partial purchases, and AMM and liquidity pools cannot be owned.

If Bitcoin consensus accepts OP_CAT, there is no need to try every means to "cheat", and more can be achieved.

Since the birth of Ordinals, most of the Bitcoin ecosystem innovations are still centered on Ordinals, including FT and NFT. With Udi's whole, perhaps the attention of the Bitcoin ecosystem will be divided into two halves, one half is OP_CAT and FT, and the other half is Ordinals and NFT.

And if OP_CAT on the Bitcoin mainnet is successfully resurrected, one of the biggest beneficiaries will undoubtedly be the "Great Wizard" and "Quantum Cat" team and holders. Even now, we can all guess the two benefits of the holders of these two projects - the first Token of CATNIP will be airdropped to "The Great Wizard" and "Quantum Cat", which is a direct benefit; mobilizing the community to lead the OP_CAT resurrection movement and ultimately succeed, and the status of an NFT project will be difficult for anyone to reach, which is an indirect benefit.

In addition to enthusiasm, I think they also have practical reasons to revive OP_CAT. After all, "The Great Wizard" received $7.5 million in financing.

The follow-up development in the short term will be very interesting. Will Udi have 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 going to the mainnet in the future? And will this cause a new wave of "China and foreign countries do not take over each other"?

Danny CAT20

Compared to the above two, this contestant is really a "fucker"... To be honest, I was confused after reading the tweet of @bc1plainview - Brother, how dare you say that you invented CAT20 a month ago...

There is no professional technical documentation like CAT20, and there is not even a tweet that elaborates on the implementation process like CATNIP, only this Telegram screenshot. OK, it doesn't matter, I will explain the idea of this picture to you - in fact, it is to string together several fields of Mint inscriptions using OP_CAT, OK, I invented the OP_CAT version of BRC-20.

This is totally unrelated to CAT20. In essence, this thing is the same as BRC-20, built on the Ordinals protocol, so he said that it must wait until the Ordinals protocol is activated on Fractal at block height 21000 before it can be launched. Secondly, CAT20 and CATNIP both use contracts to drive the entire FT protocol. This Danny CAT20 is actually driven by inscriptions, but the way of creating casting inscriptions has been changed. It is changed to use OP_CAT to string together the words on the casting inscriptions...

This is like a piece of beef. CAT20 and CATNIP are exploring how to upgrade the pot into an alchemy furnace and make beef into Tang Monk meat. The big brother said that it is OK to fry the steak as a whole, or cut it into pieces and skewer it and grill it. I am on the same level as you...

The opportunistic "plate-making innovation" can be stopped.

Conclusion

CAT20 and CATNIP are undoubtedly exciting for me. I also wanted to write about OP_CAT before, but the technical principles are really obscure, and there are no direct use cases that can be explained and shared with everyone. With the emergence of these two, I think we will see more OP_CAT applications.

Ordinals opened the door to Bitcoin innovation and exploration, but the road is long and difficult. It is lonely and abnormal for only Ordinals to exist. We are happy to see more exploration. For Fractal, the emergence of CAT20 is an excellent interpretation of its "experimental field" positioning, and it also makes me look forward to the future development of Fractal.