Drawing inspiration from the success of Bitcoin Ordinals, a dedicated core team of developers has embarked on a mission with the Asteroid Protocol. Their goal is ambitious yet clear: “build out one of the simplest, easiest-to-use, most composable, most standardized, fully on-chain data protocols in the world.” Created as a labor of love, the development and deployment of the project is full of stories of innovation, dedication, and community. We had the incredible opportunity to interview the minds behind the Asteroid Protocol, diving deep into their journey, challenges, and the future they envision. Enjoy!
Interviewing The Asteroid Protocol
What Inspired The Asteroid Protocol?
At Labs, we’ve all been following the rollout and insane growth of bitcoin ordinals. One of our contributors, Redphone, even proposed the initial design for BRC-20s there. And as inscriptions proliferated across chains, he pitched the idea internally at Labs of creating something similar for the Cosmos. Astroport dev, Donovan Solms, took up the banner and implemented it. We believe inscriptions really only make sense on blockchains that don’t support smart contracts. And we think Asteroids are particularly appealing since they’re far cheaper and faster to create than ordinals. That should lead to some wild experiments on the Hub that simply aren’t possible on ordinals because of the very different economic realities on the two chains. Asteroids are to ordinals like Solana is to ETH.
How long was the initial development cycle (from ideation to completion) before $ROIDS launched with the front end site? What were some of the greatest challenges and achievements along the way?
Redphone pitched the idea internally on November 27. By November 29, Donovan had completed some test inscriptions on a private Cosmos Hub deployment. The rest of the time was spent testing and building out a UI to make it super easy for others to inscribe, transfer and swap tokens or NFTs. The protocol ultimately launched to the public on January 16. The greatest challenge was maintaining our contributions to other protocols throughout the Cosmos. Asteroids really has been a labor of love… doing a project for fun and experimentation. Seeing the community embrace it makes all the hard work worth it.
How many key contributors are actively working on Asteroid Protocol? How is the team structured in terms of roles and expertise? Can you share a general overview of the skill sets and backgrounds that contribute to the development?
We’ve got 3 devs, 1 on comms and a handful of Labs contributors offering guidance and project management as well as helping us connect with the right collaborators. Donovan really is the key engineer behind the initial implementation. The breadth of coding knowledge he needed to pull off the initial implementation almost single-handedly is mind-boggling… he needed to understand blockchain architecture, indexers, backends, front-ends, DNS, APIs, wallet connections, security, base-64 encoding, spec design, and more. There are a few grail devs in crypto, and he’s one of them. In addition to him, we’ve added new devs including one of the big brains behind Astroport’s passive concentrated liquidity pools. We’d also like to add a biz dev/comms lead. If you’re interested, please DM us!
In the Dev Telegram, Red Phone dropped a list of use cases and ideas for inscriptions and metaprotocols. What key advantages are there in building on Cosmos Hub via the Asteroid Protocol vs other chains that support smart contracts?
Perhaps one of the biggest advantages to building on the Hub is the reach/support for ATOM among centralized exchanges. Often, ATOM is the only Cosmos-based tokens supported by CEXes, and CEX support makes it extremely easy for normies to get their hands on ATOM. With a little ATOM in a wallet, they can immediately start inscribing or swapping on http://asteroidprotocol.io. Likewise, Cosmos Hub is the biggest blockchain in the Cosmos by market cap. It’s so big, well-known and established that when you say “Cosmos,” most people assume you’re talking about Cosmos Hub and ATOM. It has the mind-share, the history, the economic might and branding power to be truly sustainable, and that makes it an ideal spot to build. On the technical side, the biggest advantage is the permanent nature of inscriptions. When you inscribe something onto the Hub, you’re embedding it directly on the blockchain for as long as the Hub continues to operate. This is possible on smart contract chains, but it’s not standard and often expensive. Instead, most smart contract chains encourage storing your data on permaweb protocols like IPFS, Arweave or Filecoin. In effect, Asteroids turn Cosmos Hub into a permaweb protocol. Anyone can write data there and be assured that some third party can’t come and erase or alter that data. Then, other devs – even web2 devs – can use that data within their apps.
Are there any strong use cases or ideas you’d like to mention that weren’t on Red Phone’s list?
One of the most interesting use cases is social. Cosmos Hub could, for example, migrate its governance debates to Asteroids. Users could publish their proposals as inscriptions, and other users could comment via inscriptions. That way governance debates will forever live directly on the chain where the changes would apply. You could also build out something like Twitter or Farcaster on top of the Hub. Users could embed their data on-chain, and different front-end apps could run their own algos on it to build up relationships, surface interesting content and enable swapping, gifting and minting directly within the app. Whatever we contribute to the protocol, we want to make it normie-friendly. Crypto has advanced to the point where you shouldn’t have to be a dev to create cool new things. As a bridge between web2 and web3, Asteroids make it even easier for anyone to launch their own experiments.
Can the Asteroid Protocol team recommend any key resources – like articles, videos, or guides – that are essential for understanding and succeeding in building on the platform? What material might help both founders and developers to grasp the full potential of what can be created?
We’re actively building out docs in Notion where we’ll store key resources like this. You can check out the work in progress here. (https://delphilabs.notion.site/Asteroid-Protocol-Docs-c3fb7993254b4c2e814c42e76a1acec3?pvs=4). In general, inscriptions protocols require zero dev experience. When you look at inscriptions that way, you see them for what they are: a democratizing force in crypto. I think all apps that build on top of inscriptions protocols should lean into this: giving anyone the ability to launch things that used to require devs.
What important catalysts do you think will need to happen to see wider adoption of Asteroids and CFT-20s?
A few things we’d love to see: 1.) A bridge to other Cosmos chains so that things like CFT-20s could trade in AMM pools throughout the Cosmos. 2.) Advanced tooling for NFT collections (including support for creator royalties, metadata and rarity traits). 3.) Experimental token types like 404. 4.) “Linked NFTs” so that users could combine NFTs to enable the upload of massive files such as video or games. Some other ideas are hypothetical but intriguing. What if we built an AMM directly into the Asteroid indexer for example? Or maybe we could explore using optimistic rollups directly on the Hub. Beyond that, we’d love to help other builders roll their visions out on the Hub. If you have crazy ideas for things like a metaverse, on-chain games or evolving NFTs, please reach out!
What is the team most excited about? What future do you imagine for Asteroid Protocol?
Asteroids are cheaper and faster than ordinals. When things are cheaper and faster, the design space opens up dramatically. So we believe we’ll see experiments on Cosmos Hub that simply aren’t possible on ordinals. Some of them could be wildly successful and eventually get emulated by the ordinals community. It’s also exciting to think that Asteroids are altering the value proposition for the Hub without forcing it to take unnecessary risks by introducing smart contracts or other functionality. Inscriptions extend the Hub in a big way while still allowing it to deliver on its core proposition, which is shared security and building out the AEZ. Someday, we think Asteroids will be effortlessly flying across every chain in the AEZ. Ultimately, though, we’re most excited by how Asteroids let anyone participate in the token and NFT-creation process. We want this to be a protocol where everyone can build without requiring a CS degree. If we do that, crypto will never be the same.
What is the current roadmap for the project? What might we see roll out in the short-to-medium term? What about long term?
For Asteroids to remain relevant, they need to be more powerful – specifically when it comes to minting and swapping NFTs. NFTs on Asteroids should have all the capabilities that they have on smart contract chains… things like royalties, rich metadata and rarity traits. We’re almost entirely focused on building out that functionality. Then, we’d like to look at ways to integrate CFT-20s into NFT payments, as well as bridging out to other chains. Once those core primitives are in place, we want to get wild… we want to run some experiments that have never been seen before on any other chain. And part of that requires working with devs throughout the Cosmos. If you have ideas, please join us in the Asteroid Devs Telegram Channel: https://t.me/+jKqYBOwIj0c5Njgx.