Yesterday was probably a good day for the Bitcoin ecosystem to enjoy the sunshine like a cat. In just one day, we witnessed the rapid debut of three Bitcoin FT protocols based on OP_CAT - CAT20 on Fractal, CATNIP launched by the "Quantum Cat" team, and "Danny CAT20" of the "Moto series".

Among them, CAT20 on Fractal has been launched, and the price of $FB has exceeded $30. When I wrote this article, the mining fee on the Fractal chain has soared to 2000 sats/vb, and the popularity continues to rise.

The CATNIP of the "Quantum Cat" team is currently only an official announcement, and its actual implementation will have to wait for the OP_CAT function on the Bitcoin mainnet to be reactivated.

As for the "Moto Series" "Danny CAT20", it was the founder of Motoswap and OP_NET @bc1plainview who claimed that he was the first person to propose using OP_CAT to drive the Bitcoin FT protocol just 2 hours after the birth of CAT20. I will not express my opinion for the time being, and will elaborate on it in detail when the relevant discussion comes.

Let's start with the already playable CAT20 on Fractal.

CAT20

Although CAT20 was discovered and spread by some players in the early stage, it was not very popular at that time. Until last night, I could still complete transactions at a rate of 300-500 sats/vb. The real outbreak began around 11 o'clock last night, when a "CAT20" column was suddenly added to Fractal's block browser, and market sentiment was instantly ignited, and FOMO sentiment broke out.

The data here has not been moved since it came out last night, so it is hard to tell how long it will take for $CAT to finish.

If $FB is priced at $30 and the fee rate reaches 2000 sats/vb, this means the cost per transaction is close to $1.

In other words, in this case, the market is "buying" $CAT at a market cap of $21 million.

The technical documentation of CAT20 is very professional, and the GitHub page is also quite standardized. This protocol does use OP CAT technology to drive the FT protocol. If it were not for a team with a deep Bitcoin technical background, it would be difficult to produce such high-level results.

So, what is "the FT protocol that actually uses OP CAT technology"? Quoting the explanation in the official document: "Any rules that govern the token casting process are executed through smart contracts." Based on this, CAT20 has the following features (for more details, please refer to the official document)

No asset burning: UTXO used to mint tokens can be used again for minting. Because CAT20 only writes data into UTXO and the smart contract is responsible for processing this data, it is different from the traditional "burning assets". In CAT20, on-chain data cannot be lost, and the contract tracks changes by checking on-chain transactions. In fact, UTXO is only used for contract interaction, similar to ERC-20,

Ticker is repeatable: Although the Ticker is repeatable, the txid and output prime of each token in the genesis transaction are unique, which together constitute a unique tokenid to distinguish different tokens under the same Ticker.

Flexible casting rules: There are no fixed restrictions on casting rules, which depends entirely on the way the contract is written. The official document mentions various application scenarios such as pre-sale pre-mining, PoW mining, casting by designated holders, and pledge casting.

The CATNIP of the "It's a Kitten" team is similar to CAT20 in implementation. In the following CATNIP section, I will focus on its potential huge impact on the Bitcoin ecosystem.

CATNIP

First of all, I would like to remind everyone that CATNIP can only be launched after OP_CAT is officially activated on the Bitcoin mainnet. Before that, there is no way to participate. This is different from runes, and you can't "jump the gun" like Casey did. The reason is simple - as mentioned above, without OP_CAT, it is impossible to achieve "all rules governing the token casting process are executed through smart contracts."

When I first saw CATNIP, my first reaction was that @udiWertheimer had finally shown his “fangs” and that he seemed to be “breaking out of the box of Ordinals”.

Why do we say that? We can find some clues from his tweets:



He said that the user experience of BRC-20 and Runes disappointed most crypto enthusiasts. Although Ordinals and Inscriptions are widely regarded as superior implementations of NFTs on other chains, BRC-20 and Runes fail to meet the standards of other on-chain FT protocols. The reason is that Bitcoin's consensus (including nodes and miners) is unaware of the existence of these protocols. Runes have to bypass restrictions through code tricks and "cheat" the Bitcoin network to function (the "cheating" here is not an attack, but a description). This is also why Runes need to cut UTXOs, partial purchases cannot be achieved in transactions, and they cannot have AMMs and liquidity pools like other chains.

But if Bitcoin consensus accepts OP_CAT, these problems will not exist and more functions will be achieved.

Since the birth of Ordinals, most of the innovation in the Bitcoin ecosystem has been centered around it, especially in the fields of FT and NFT. Udi’s current actions may divide the attention of the Bitcoin ecosystem into two halves, one part is OP_CAT and FT, and the other part is Ordinals and NFT.

If OP_CAT on the Bitcoin mainnet is successfully resurrected, then there is no doubt that one of the biggest beneficiaries will be the "Great Wizard" and "Quantum Cat" team and their holders. Even now, we can foresee the double benefits of these project holders: first, the first token of CATNIP will be airdropped to the supporters of "Great Wizard" and "Quantum Cat", bringing direct benefits; second, they promote the resurrection of OP_CAT, making it a leader in Bitcoin NFT projects, and the indirect benefits are also considerable.

Not only are they passionate about pushing for OP_CAT’s resurrection, they also have practical reasons. After all, the “Great Wizard” has already received $7.5 million in financing.

The next few days will be very interesting. Will Udi start a debate with Ordinals supporters (or even Casey)? Will there be competition between CAT20 on Fractal, which has taken the lead? Will CAT20 be available on the mainnet in the future? Will this trigger a new round of "China and foreign countries do not take over each other"?

Danny CAT20

Compared with the two mentioned above, this contestant's "fucking" attribute is indeed particularly prominent... To be honest, after reading @bc1plainview's tweet, I was completely confused - Brother, how dare you claim that you invented CAT20 a month ago? .

Compared with the professional technical documents of CAT20 or the detailed implementation tweets of CATNIP, Danny CAT20 seems much simpler, relying only on a Telegram screenshot to explain his ideas. It doesn’t matter, I will break down the logic of this picture for you - in fact, it is to connect several fields of the Mint inscription through OP_CAT. You can understand that I invented an OP_CAT version of BRC-20.

This is completely different from CAT20. The essence of Danny CAT20 is the same as BRC-20, both of which are based on the Ordinals protocol, so it must wait until the Fractal block height reaches 21,000 and the Ordinals protocol is activated before it can be released. CAT20 and CATNIP drive the entire FT protocol through smart contracts, while Danny CAT20 only changes the way of casting inscriptions and connects the fields in series with OP_CAT.

To put it simply, CAT20 and CATNIP are trying to use more advanced technology to upgrade beef into "Tang Monk meat", while Danny CAT20 is saying, "In fact, you can just fry the steak directly, or cut it into pieces and grill it on skewers." But he claims to be at the same technical level as CAT20.

It is better not to tout this kind of opportunistic "superficial innovation" anymore.

Conclusion

I am very excited about the emergence of CAT20 and CATNIP. Although I wanted to write about OP_CAT before, the technical principles were too complicated and lacked specific application examples to be clearly communicated. Now, with the launch of CAT20 and CATNIP, I believe we will see more innovative applications based on OP_CAT in the future.

Ordinals has opened the door to innovation in the Bitcoin ecosystem, but relying solely on Ordinals is inevitably lonely and limited. We look forward to more exploration and breakthroughs, and the birth of CAT20 is the best interpretation of Fractal's role as a "test field". This makes me full of more expectations and confidence in the future development of Fractal.

Casting Tutorial

Self-casting requires certain computer knowledge. The following are the basic configurations and steps.

1. Configure the environment and install three dependencies, including git, Node.js, and Docker. Download the CAT Protocol code.

2. Run the Docker container. You need to run a Fractal full node on the server and run a local indexer.

3. Install and build the CLI.

4. Create wallet and mint deployment.