Creating NFTs on Bitcoin for just $5? Learn about BRC-1155 and GBRC-721.

Author: Cookie, BlockBeats

The high issuance cost has always been one of the reasons affecting the Bitcoin NFT market. Although there have been quite a few BRC-XXX protocols recently in the market, the balance between keeping the Bitcoin NFT's "original flavor" and reducing the issuance cost is best sought after by BRC-1155 and GBRC-721, in my opinion.

BRC-1155: Making "Open Edition" Bitcoin Possible

A few months ago, the "Open Edition" art NFT based on ERC-1155 on Ethereum became a "minor trend" in the market for a period of time. The improvement of its infrastructure and the continuous progress of "art gamification" gameplay ultimately attracted market attention to "Open Edition". (Recommended reading: "Art Gamification" of NFT: Burn-Redeem and Lottery Tickets)

There is a pain point in implementing "Open Edition" on Bitcoin, especially when the NFT content type is large animated images, audio, and even video files. The high cost of engraving can only be borne by either the creator or the collector, making the development of "Open Edition" on Bitcoin almost hopeless. Creators resist issuing "Open Edition" artworks on Bitcoin because they need to bear the risk in advance (paying high engraving costs without being able to sell), and collectors also resist participating due to the high cost of engraving.

In order to make the development of "Open Edition" on Bitcoin possible, it is necessary to reduce the costs of both parties. The core idea of BRC-1155 is that if we can accept JSON code inscriptions like BRC-20 to confirm ownership of all copies of a work of art, as a way to own a work of art stored on Bitcoin, then we don't need to spend multiple or even more Gas to duplicate an image/audio/video/other file. We only need to spend very low Gas to obtain a "certificate", and then let the index render the corresponding content based on the on-chain inscription pointed to by the "certificate" inscription.

BRC-20 + ERC-1155 = BRC-1155

The cost for creators and collectors has been greatly reduced. For creators, they only need to engrave an image/audio/video/other file as the "original" that is being referred to, and then engrave a "deployment" inscription.

"Deployment" Inscription Example

The meanings of the key words in the above "deployment" inscription example are as follows:

"p": Protocol type. This keyword must be included and defines operations based on the BRC-1155 protocol, helping to index and identify BRC-1155 events for processing.

"op": Event type. The required keyword that defines the event type, which can be Deploy, Mint, Burn, or Fractionalize.

"abbrev": BRC-1155 series name abbreviation. The required keyword that defines the abbreviation for the BRC-1155 series name, which cannot exceed 10 characters.

"Inscription": Index pointer. This is a required keyword that defines which on-chain inscription (based on the inscription number) the BRC-1155 series will render content for. For example, if you want to render the content for Inscription #123, then you would fill in "123".

In addition, creators can also add some other keywords in the "deployment" inscription to achieve functions such as determining the total supply, the number of "certificates" that each Mint inscription can represent, and adding additional descriptive information. (For details, please refer to the BRC-1155 manual)

For collectors, all they need to do is engrave a "minting" inscription to obtain ownership of the corresponding on-chain inscription.

"Casting" Inscription Example. As you can see, the engraved text size is only 81 bytes, greatly reducing costs.

According to the above example, the collector has acquired ownership of Inscription #8019479 with a size of 57.6 KB.

Not only has BRC-1155 reduced the cost of "Open Edition", it also provides "Burn" function to achieve "art gamification" gameplay. Currently, BRC-1155's developer @ivantkf has collaborated with Bitcoin NFT project Bitcoin Pizzas and PixelBirds Sparrow to establish the BRC-1155 Foundation, and indexing and more features are being improved. Bitcoin Pizzas and PixelBirds Sparrow have also attempted to issue the "Open Edition" project using BRC-1155.

GBRC-721: Each feature is converted to Base 64 and stored on the chain, and assembled on the front end

Some BRC-XXX protocols are considered to have disrupted the "original flavor" of Bitcoin NFT by using IPFS to implement methods for pointing and completing file rendering. GBRC-721 uses a clever solution to maintain the full on-chain storage feature of Bitcoin NFT - converting image files into Base 64 strings and writing them into the "deployment" inscription engraved on the chain, and the front-end reads the Base 64 strings of various features stored in the "deployment" inscription pointed by the "casting" inscription and converts them back into images, combining them into a complete image.

"Deployment" Inscription Example. As you can see, various feature images are converted into Base 64 strings and written in the "deployment" inscription, such as the blue background and the robot's antenna. Engraving the "deployment" inscription is equivalent to storing the images of various features on the Bitcoin chain.

"Casting" Inscription Example. As you can see, the front-end will read the various features contained in the "deployment" inscription (t_ins field, representing the Inscription ID pointing to the "deployment" inscription), and based on the feature array (a field, representing the front-end will assemble the complete image based on these corresponding features).

GBRC-721 protocol was proposed by @0xJerry543, the founder of the Bitcoin NFT project DogePunks. He also created a new series called OrdiBots to demonstrate the protocol.

Conclusion

BRC-1155 and GBRC-721 both show us a new idea - the JSON code inscription of BRC-20 can not only be used for asset issuance, but also make the gameplay of Bitcoin NFT more diverse. At the same time, since what is minted by BRC-1155 and GBRC-721 are both JSON code texts, if you participate in the casting of related projects, what you will get is not pictures, but text (Text) type inscriptions like BRC-20 Token.

In order to obtain a more comprehensive user experience, it is necessary to wait for the indexing of these protocols and for wallets/trading markets to recognize and adapt to them accordingly. At the same time, we can also say that reducing the cost of Bitcoin NFTs is a question of "whether to make the front-end do more or less" in the current stage of experimentation.

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