A Detailed Explanation of "FOMO by Foreigners" CBRC-20

Author: Cookie

The CBRC-20 protocol is a rising star in the "BRC-20" family over the past two weeks. This phenomenon is quite special and interesting because, during this time, much attention has actually shifted to the speculation of inscriptions on various public chains outside the Bitcoin ecosystem, such as Solana, AVAX, INJ, etc. Within the Bitcoin ecosystem, even though the market capitalization of BRC-20 related assets still holds a relatively dominant position, other protocols like Atomicals and NostrAssets have also diverted a significant amount of attention and funds.

I define the pure "BRC-20" family to include not only BRC-20 itself but also the Tap Protocol and CBRC-20. Interestingly, both of these protocols have a strong influence in the English-speaking community, so much so that players in the Chinese-speaking community emphasize that "many foreigners like" them. However, the level of innovation between Tap Protocol and CBRC-20 varies significantly, with one project being smooth and the other experiencing twists and turns.

Tap and CBRC-20: One is a "Patch," the Other is a "Mod"

Before discussing CBRC-20, let’s briefly talk about the Tap Protocol. The nature of Tap is generally an enhancement patch for BRC-20, like a game that already has a fun version, and just needs some patches to enhance the experience. Overall, the functionalities of Tap, such as lifting the 4-character ticker limit, batch airdrops, and swapping inscriptions, are more about updates at the indexing level—how to represent some pain points/unimplemented features of BRC-20 using JSON, and then allowing the indexer to understand these behaviors.

Tap belongs to beny’s TRAC ecosystem, which has had many loyal foreign fans along the way, and overall, there have been no surprises; foreigners have always enjoyed "Marshal B" making various criticisms against centralized indexing.

The innovation of CBRC-20 is actually built on the foundation that the BRC-20 protocol uses Ordinals v0.9.0 as the unified standard version for maintaining indexing stability—new features introduced after the Ordinals protocol v0.9.0 cannot be utilized by the BRC-20 protocol, so a new version is created by combining the basic functional logic with new features. If we consider both Tap and CBRC-20 as "private servers" of BRC-20, the former is a "classic server" with all patches applied, while the latter is a "modded server" that introduces many new contents.

The Ordinals protocol version 0.10.0 introduced fields for defining "metaprotocol" and "metadata" for inscriptions. The most direct effect of these two new fields is to significantly shorten the lengthy and repetitive text that the BRC-20 protocol uses during deployment/minting/transferring, thus achieving cost reduction and simplifying indexing.

The above image is an example of a BRC-20 deployment inscription. For CBRC-20, which has introduced "metadata," it actually only needs to keep the three lines of "tick," "max," and "lim" within the curly braces, and then compress the already reduced information into a smaller .cbor file.

The "metaprotocol" directly informs the index of which protocol's specifications to follow to understand the instructions. For minting and transferring, the instructions are simplified as follows:

Comparing the content size with BRC-20:

BRC-20, transfer operation content size 57 bytes

CBRC-20, transfer operation content size 4 bytes

Another interesting aspect brought by "metaprotocol" and "metadata" is that CBRC-20 Tokens have no type restrictions, creating a feeling of "transmutation" for weapons and equipment in games— for example, you can mint 1000 of a certain CBRC-20 Token, and then when executing the minting instruction, attach an image of a CryptoPunk, so it can be both 1000 of a certain CBRC-20 Token and 1 Punk. Tap has actually attempted something similar by adding a Logo field to the Token, allowing it to reference an Inscription ID for the index to process. However, Tap relies on its own indexing, while CBRC relies on the new features of the Ordinals protocol.

--file can attach a specified file

CBRC-20 is a "starter" created after the split of the original OSHI team. In addition to CBRC-20, this part of the original OSHI team is also working on a larger universal index called Moto, which essentially allows any developer to submit their own FT standards to Moto, and then Moto combines these standards to achieve asset interaction across FT protocols.

Popular CBRC-20 Tokens Overview

BORD

The first Token of CBRC-20, with a total supply of 21 million, currently priced at about 2.2 U per Token, corresponding to a market cap of approximately 46.2 million U. As mentioned earlier, a major feature of CBRC-20 is that there are no type restrictions; it can be a coin or not. For example, the deployment inscription of $BORD is not in text format but rather an HTML file introducing CBRC-20.

NODE

Claimed to be the first practical Token on CBRC-20, providing batch minting services for CBRC-20 Tokens on Discord. Total supply of 10,000, currently priced at about 200 U per Token, corresponding to a market cap of approximately 2 million U.

SYSM

Claimed to be a dual-sided inscription that can be recognized by both the CBRC-20 protocol and the BRC-20 protocol. Total supply of 21 million, currently priced at about 0.12 U per Token, corresponding to a market cap of approximately 2.52 million U.

You might be a bit confused here—didn’t we say one is v0.10.0 and the other is v0.9.0? How can two different versions of the Ordinals protocol index be compatible? Let me give you an analogy to make it easier to understand.

The original inscription is like being placed in an "envelope" (OPFALSE OPIF OPPUSH content content content and content… OPENDIF), and the index has to open the envelope and read it word by word to know what protocol's inscription is inside (which index to work with), what this inscription represents, and what to do…

The "metaprotocol" is like having already written on the envelope, "I am an inscription of a certain protocol," so the index can interpret my instructions according to the manual of that protocol. The v0.10.0 index knows this is a CBRC-20 inscription. Then, as it continues reading, it finds that the main text is written according to the BRC-20 index, at which point the v0.9.0 index knows this is a BRC-20 inscription. It’s indeed not a perfect match, but there’s still a part that can be understood.

9999

Performance art, 9 to the mechanism, just look at the image below to understand:

Currently, it has a market cap of approximately 1 million U.

Common Tools for CBRC-20

Engraving - https://cybord.org/thecraft.html (can mint without tipping)

Market - https://ordinalnovus.com/ (many features are still not well implemented, such as sorting by unit price, making it look quite cluttered)

Conclusion

From the current market performance, apart from the first Token $BORD, the others are performing relatively flat, which is somewhat similar to Tap…

Although the market performance is similar, CBRC-20 has made significant progress compared to Tap, as its underlying positioning has upgraded from a patch to a mod. Of course, the greater value actually lies in Moto (the original part of the Oshi team). The new CBRC-20 Tokens from Moto have already been deployed, and a snapshot of the old BRC-20 Tokens from Oshi has been completed, preparing to issue new Tokens to restart. Unless Tap brings $TRAC onto its own protocol, CBRC-20 has already formed a suppressive narrative at this stage.