Today, contributors to the Asteroid Protocol have published a draft specification for a new inscription format. The team announced this development via Twitter, which will expand the functionality of Asteroid inscriptions on the Cosmos Hub. The new features proposed within the draft include Collections, Royalties, Enhanced Metadata, and ensuring Backwards Compatibility with existing inscriptions. You can read the original here. We summarize it below.

Key Features of the New Inscription Spec

The draft inscription specification addresses several crucial requirements:

  1. Easy Identification of Collections: Ensuring that any inscription can be easily identified as belonging to a specific collection.
  2. Collection Discovery: Enabling users to find all inscriptions belonging to a given collection.
  3. Enhanced Collection Metadata: Including details such as the collection’s name, description, and image.
  4. Rich NFT Metadata: Incorporating name, description, image, and traits for each inscription.
  5. Open Collection Concept: Allowing collections to be dynamic, not requiring all inscriptions to be known or minted at the time of creation.
  6. Backwards Compatibility: Ensuring new specifications align with existing inscriptions.

Creating New Inscriptions

The team will extend the current Inscription operation to support additional metadata fields like traits. This involves using a specific hash format for content inscription, and the metadata can include various attributes such as name, description, mime type, and explicit content flags.

Introducing Collections

A novel aspect of the draft is the introduction of Collections, which allow grouping inscriptions verifiably on-chain. Collections are essentially inscriptions themselves, with metadata including symbol, name, description, mime type, explicit content flag, royalty percentage, payment address, and more.

Associating and Verifying Collection inscriptions

Associating an inscription with a collection involves setting the inscription’s parent to the Collection transaction hash. The Indexer must verify if the inscription is a valid part of the collection, considering factors like the Collection owner’s inscription or a signature signed with the Collection minter’s private key.

Backwards Compatibility and Migration

The draft also addresses the migration of existing inscriptions to the new format, proposing a new version of the Inscription operation (v2) and a one-time migration operation. This ensures that legacy inscriptions can integrate with the new system while maintaining their historical integrity.

Future Updates and Enhancements

Future updates will include mass migration capabilities and the ability to update traits for existing inscriptions. Additionally, the protocol is considering supporting pack subcollections within a collection, potentially allowing for on-chain pack dynamics.

Impact on the Inscription Ecosystem

This draft specification represents a significant step in the evolution of the inscription ecosystem on the Cosmos Hub. By introducing these advanced features and maintaining compatibility with existing inscriptions, Asteroid Protocol is paving the way for a more dynamic, rich, and user-friendly inscription experience. This development not only enhances the value of inscriptions within the Asteroid ecosystem but also sets a precedent for future innovations in the broader inscription space.