Despite the market being unfriendly for quite a long while, innovations are nonstop in the cryptospace. Developers are working on new things, releasing products, applications and such. Recently, a new protocol so-called "Ethscriptions" was launched by Tom Lehman aka Middlemarch and he talked more about it on his Twitter podcast on the 17th of June.
But what are they?
Ethscriptions are a new way of creating and sharing digital artifacts on Ethereum using transaction calldata. - MiddleMarch
Simply put, Ethscriptions enable the creation and transfer of NFTs through calldata, "a special data location in the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) that contains the function arguments, only available for external function call parameters." "Calldata is used to save gas because data in calldata is not copied when it is passed to the contract, whereas data in memory is copied." (Source1)/ (Source2)
Per decrypt, Ethscriptions are a type of NFT that contain inscriptions, which are messages or data that are permanently stored on the Ethereum blockchain. They enable non-financial and arbitrary data to be written into the main Ethereum blockchain. Users can inscribe any type of file provided it is under 96 kilobytes in size. (Source)
Accordingly, here's how the Ethscriptions work and I quote these still from Middlemarch's tweet, re:
- Any successful Ethereum transaction whose input data (when interpreted as UTF-8) is a valid data URI creates an Ethscription, provided the data URI is unique. Duplicate content is ignored. All valid mimetypes are supported.
- For the URI to be unique, no Ethscription from a previous block or a transaction earlier in the same block can have the same content.
- Any Ethereum transaction whose input data is the transaction hash of a valid Ethscription is a valid Ethscription transfer, provided the transaction sender is the Ethscription’s owner.
- The recipient of the creation transaction is the Ethscription’s initial owner. The sender of the creation transaction is the Ethscription's creator.
Ethscriptions are said to be safe, trustless and decentralized too. One can use the Ethscriptions protocol without relying on external parties nor need anyone's permission and nobody can ban any person from using it. (Source)
On the same day, they also launched Ethereum Punks and they have been ethscribed.
Create Ethscriptions and put it into an Emblem Vault for Opensea
The general process involves creating an Ethereum transaction, including the inscription in the calldata, broadcasting the transaction, and storing the inscription permanently on the blockchain as part of the transaction.
Here's a 3-minute video tutorial which I found on Twitter. The owner mentioned spending about 10 dollars for the ethscriptions to complete.
And here is a quick tutorial which was obtained from Ethscriptions website. Use the easy creation tool or you can do the following step by step process:
Convert an image (max size: ~90KB) to a Base 64-encoded data URI (data:image/png;base64,...) using a service like base64-image.de. The Ethscriptions protocol supports all data URIs but images work best.
Convert the data URI to hex using an online tool like hexhero.
Send a 0 eth transaction to the person you want to own the Ethscription with the hex data from (2) in the "Hex data" field
After a few moments it should appear on this site, provided someone hasn’t already Ethscribed the same data. Duplicate content is ignored!
(Source)
Here are a screenshot of some recent Ethscriptions.
Transferring Ethscriptions
Tutorial sourced from here.
Find the ID of the Ethscription you want to transfer. An Ethscription’s ID is the transaction hash of the transaction that created the Ethscription. It looks like this:
0xcdb372580242c1c1bbcd2914ddbdb609b33d2e2e163c6595e164cb4dc6665153. You can get this from Etherscan or from this site.
Send a 0 ETH transaction to the new proposed owner, including the Ethscription ID in the "Hex data" field.
After a few moments the Ethscription’s owner should update on this site, provided you were the owner of the Ethscription when you sent the transfer transaction. Unauthorized transfers are ignored.
One can track the transaction using Ethscriptions tracker on its website. But one can track it another way by using an indexer provided one knows what he is doing.
Summary
Ethscriptions are a new concept of sharing and enabling digital artifacts Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) on Ethereum network. They contain inscriptions and are created and shared using transaction calldata. They are cheaper and more decentralized than other NFTs and enable non-financial and arbitrary data to be written into the Ethereum blockchain.
Info Sources:
Images via Ethscription and Ethereum Punks. No copyright infringement intended. 19062023/09:340ph