Inscription Protocol Analysis: Principles, Implementation, and Security Considerations

Recently, mainstream trading platforms have successively launched inscription markets, supporting various inscription protocols, attracting widespread attention in the market. However, due to the complexity and novelty of inscription protocols, various security issues have frequently arisen, posing threats to user asset security and negatively impacting the healthy development of the entire inscription ecosystem.

Inscription Overview

Inscription is essentially the use of blockchain characteristics to record specific and meaningful information on the chain. Once this information is written to the blockchain, it will be permanently preserved and difficult to tamper with. The recorded content can be simple text, or it can be complex code, images, etc., thus realizing the functionality of digital assets.

Inscription ecological status

Since the emergence of the BRC-20 and other inscription protocols on the Bitcoin public chain, the inscription ecosystem has developed rapidly. Currently, major public chains have joined the inscription circle, such as Ethereum's Ethscription protocol, Bitcoin's ARC-20 protocol, BSC's BSC-20 protocol, and Polygon's PRC-20 protocol. These protocols are all designed for issuing inscriptions on their respective public chains.

Detailed Explanation of Mainstream Inscription Protocols

1. BRC-20

BRC-20 is based on the UTXO model of Bitcoin and the Ordinals protocol. It writes uniformly formatted JSON text data into satoshis through Ordinals, serving as the ledger for BRC-20 tokens. It mainly includes three operations: deploy(, mint), and transfer(.

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) 2. ARC-20

ARC-20 is also based on the Bitcoin public chain, but unlike BRC-20, it uses the number of satoshis in UTXO to represent the quantity of tokens, with the rule being that 1 satoshi equals 1 ARC-20 token. When minting, the number of satoshis in UTXO is the quantity of tokens minted.

3. Ethscription

Ethscription is an inscription protocol on Ethereum that uses the calldata data block of transactions to store standard data. When creating an Ethscription, the content (, such as the image ), needs to be converted into a Base64 encoded URI, and then into a hexadecimal string to be filled in the calldata. When transferring, the transaction hash that created the Ethscription is filled in the calldata.

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) 4. EVM Compatible Chain Inscription

EVM-compatible chains such as BSC, Ethereum, and Polygon use a similar method to store fixed-format data using calldata. Taking BSC as an example, the inscription format is JSON text, which includes fields such as protocol name, operation type, token name, and quantity.

Security Precautions

1. The BTC inscription protocol is based on UTXO transactions, and users conducting ordinary BTC transfers may mistakenly transfer or "burn" inscription assets.

2. Fully understand the implementation principles of each inscription protocol to avoid irreversible losses caused by misoperations.

3. There may be differences in the inscription protocol on EVM chains, and the transfer methods may also vary, so caution is advised when using.

4. Although inscriptions can reduce user costs, they lack smart contract protection and extra caution is needed during operations.

In summary, the inscription protocol utilizes blockchain characteristics to store information and is displayed through offline servers. Users can save transaction fees when participating, but must fully understand the principles of the protocol to avoid asset loss. With the development of the ecosystem, more innovations and optimizations may emerge in the future, and users should continue to pay attention and participate cautiously.

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