Over the past year, Ethscriptions has made significant progress in technological innovation and application. This article will review the development of Ethscriptions over the past year and look forward to its future potential.
Introduction
On June 18, 2024, marked the one-year anniversary of the birth of the Ethscriptions technology and its token ETHS on the Ethereum mainnet. This technology aims to share information and execute computations on the Ethereum mainnet at a lower cost, serving as an alternative solution to Ethereum layer 2, directly expanding the capacity of the mainnet. Over the past year, Ethscriptions has made significant progress in technological innovation and application. This article will review the development of Ethscriptions over the past year and look forward to its future potential.
Technological Advancements
1. Efficient and cost-effective data storage
At the birth of the Ethscriptions protocol, it cleverly utilized the calldata storage space of the Ethereum mainnet to allow data to be directly written into blocks, meeting the need for permanent storage of NFT data. This innovation not only enhances the reliability and persistence of data but also reduces the corresponding storage costs. Previously, NFT data was stored on off-chain servers or cloud services like Filecoin. Once the project stops or modifies the NFT content, users would suffer significant losses. Through the collision of ideas between the founder and the Ethereum community, an off-chain computing and corresponding indexing open-source solution for mainnet scalability was derived, which has been implemented and iteratively upgraded over the past year.
After the Cancun upgrade in May, the Blob introduced in EIP-4844 allows anyone to store data on Ethereum at a price 10 to 100 times cheaper than calldata. In response to this, Tom Lehman, the founder of Ethscriptions, created Blobscriptions by upgrading ESIP-8, cleverly using the new features of Ethereum to further reduce the cost of engraving while expanding the capacity for storing data. However, Ethereum itself does not guarantee the availability of Blob data for more than 18 days, while the indexer of Ethereum Memes will store this data indefinitely. This innovation has been thanked by Ethereum founder Vitalik, and Blobscriptions, namely ESIP-8, has successfully activated the Blob price discovery mechanism after the Cancun upgrade.
2. Ethereum mainnet scalability solutions
The Facet computing platform developed based on the Ethscriptions protocol was launched on the mainnet on November 30, 2023. The platform moves a large number of deterministic complex computing tasks off-chain for processing and synchronizes the computing results to the chain in real-time. Due to the determinism of the computation execution process itself, users do not need to bear the additional cost of mainnet computation execution. The benefit of doing this is to greatly reduce the gas cost required for on-chain computation while ensuring the security and integrity of the Ethereum mainnet. This significantly improves the utilization efficiency of on-chain resources and supports larger-scale and more complex applications.
Ethereum Layer 2 has always had the problem of excessive centralization. In order to achieve low gas fees and high TPS, Layer 2 chooses to sacrifice the decentralization mechanism of the blockchain and synchronize with the Ethereum mainnet through a centralized sequencer. Once the Layer 2 is shut down or closed, the assets stored on the Layer 2 will be greatly affected and may even cause huge losses. The recent Linea hack attack, one-hour shutdown, and address review event have once again highlighted this risk. At the same time, for L2 with a corporate operation mechanism, if there is a shutdown or closure event due to the inability to continue financing, there will be a great risk to the user assets on the L2 chain.
Facet has actually become the L1+ scaling solution for the mainnet, where Ethereum mainnet serves as an anchoring layer of commitment, and off-chain client verification is performed based on the account model (open-source multi-nodes). The comparison between sovereignty-based Rollup and L2 is as follows:
3. Multi-chain extension potential
Although Ethscriptions and the Facet computing platform are developed based on Ethereum, they can be extended to all EVM chains and UTXO networks through the CSV client verification mode (preliminary discussions have been held with overseas developers and founders on the technical route of combining RGB and Facet to expand to the Bitcoin network. RGB is a Turing-complete smart contract scaling solution for BTC that has been under development since 2016. Due to the lack of a unified software engineering framework, progress has been relatively slow. Its main idea is based on the off-chain client verification of the UTXO model). For example, by hashing large-scale structured data in the original database and then using the hash value as a credential to store it on the chain, it can not only effectively reduce storage and computation costs but also expand the application scenarios of blockchain. It is expected to achieve low-cost and fast migration of web2 data businesses to the chain and is also suitable for the combination of blockchain with innovative fields such as Depin and AI (Agent).
Dapps Applications and Ecosystem
The Ethscriptions umbrella protocol and the Facet computing platform are still in the early stages of Dapps applications and ecosystem enrichment. With the unremitting efforts of the founder team, new developers, and the addition of third-party applications and platforms, several infrastructure applications in the ecosystem have been launched, such as FacetSwap and FacetScan.
1. On-chain DEX
FacetSwap is a decentralized exchange (DEX) based on the Ethscriptions technology. Its gas fees are only 1/10 to 1/20 of Uniswap, and it plans to further optimize and reduce it to 1/100. FacetSwap has not only been successfully launched on major wallet platforms such as Binance Wallet, OK Wallet, and Gate Wallet but also has seen a surge in the number of users to 26,763. Taking the pioneering token $eths of Ethscriptions as an example, the total trading volume on FacetSwap during June 18, 2023, to May 21, 2024, exceeded 80,000 ETH (about $290 million), with a current liquidity pool of 135 WU and a daily trading volume of 2,000 ETH. This achievement demonstrates the huge potential of Ethscriptions in reducing transaction costs and improving user experience. Currently, the overall TVL (Total Value Locked) on the Facet computing platform has reached $40 million.
2. On-chain native Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs)
Ordex.io is another trading market based on the Ethscriptions technology, focusing on NFT and Ethereum Memes order transactions, under the umbrella of Facet. This platform not only supports the issuance and sale of NFTs but also lists and trades Ethereum Memes tokens, enabling the permanent storage of on-chain data. At the same time, Ordex.io solves the high cost and low efficiency issues commonly found in the NFT market through its efficient data management and storage mechanisms.
3. ERC-20 token wrapper and trading bot
On April 3, 2024, Facet launched support for ERC-20 token wrappers, allowing users to directly wrap tokens, including all ERC-20 tokens such as USDT and WBTC, for low-cost trading and token launches on the Facet platform. At the same time, a development team composed of former pepe founding team members has developed a dedicated trading bot sniper based on Telegram, which provides more convenient trading functions and services for Ethereum Memes tokens and wrapped ERC-20 tokens for all users on Telegram.
The application scenarios and corresponding cost comparison that can be achieved through the Facet decentralized computing platform are as follows:
Future Outlook
Over the past year, the Ethscriptions umbrella protocol and the Facet computing platform have successfully operated on the Ethereum mainnet, providing users with a blockchain solution that is lower in cost and more efficient. After verifying the feasibility of their technology and developing practical use cases, they will focus on the following areas in the future:
1. Continuous technological innovation and implementation
Expected future technological innovations will focus on the following areas:
– Performance optimization: Further improve the synchronization efficiency of on-chain and off-chain computations, and further optimize data storage and transmission costs.
– Asset composability: Achieve the composability of Memes assets through recursion and other methods.
– Enhanced security: Safeguard the security of on-chain data and user assets on the Ethereum mainnet through stricter and more advanced security measures.
– Scalability: Develop more cross-chain solutions to make Ethscriptions applicable not only to Ethereum but also to a wider range of blockchain networks.
2. Ethscriptions umbrella protocol and Facet ecosystem application and market penetration
– Collaborate with more blockchain projects: Promote the joint development of technology and ecosystems through collaborations with other blockchain projects. This includes not only projects within the Ethereum ecosystem but also the broader blockchain field.
– Explore enterprise applications: Provide traditional enterprises with efficient and low-cost data management and storage solutions by hashing complex data and storing it on the chain. This will help enterprises achieve data migration to the blockchain in a cost-effective manner.
– Open-source community development: Establish close interaction and technical exchanges with the Ethereum developer community through Gitcoin, the upcoming Facet Grant, and continuous support and donations from the Ethereum Memes community. Attract more developers to join the open-source development of Ethscriptions and the Facet computing platform.
On May 17, Ethereum founder Vitalik published a new article titled “The near and mid-term future of improving the Ethereum network’s permissionlessness and decentralization” on his homepage, discussing the recent and mid-term goals of Ethereum: to continuously improve the permissionlessness and decentralization of Ethereum. Although this article does not mention many new technologies, it once again clearly emphasizes the most core and important characteristics of Ethereum: permissionlessness and decentralization.
People like to use the permissionless and decentralized Ethereum mainnet, and with the guarantee of 100% security, they should adopt a more tolerant attitude towards innovative scaling solutions for Ethereum and increase support for the ecosystem. Listen to the real voices of ordinary users in the community, especially in the G G20 Web3 infrastructure voting, where the total amount ($51,000) and total votes (8881) rank first, and the decentralized computing platform Facet developed based on the Ethscriptions umbrella protocol.
We have reason to believe that with the attention and promotion of Vitalik and the Ethereum Foundation, as well as the efforts of the community, founders, and exchanges, Ethscriptions will further evolve into an Ethereum mainnet scaling solution with official legitimacy, a powerful ecosystem, a unified community, and the ability to support larger-scale users and data business.
