Technology & Security
Since the Bitcoin Cash upgrade last May there’s been a sudden emergence of token creation protocols introduced to the BCH protocol. Lots of projects and ideas have been released over the past few months priming up the flames of competitive development. Now there are two more BCH-based token protocols that have been introduced to the BCH community — Recursive Smelting and a javascript project called Bitcoin Token.
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Two More Bitcoin Cash-Powered Token Projects Revealed
So many representative token creation projects have been revealed to the BCH community over the past few months that it’s been like a flood of tokenization innovation. Projects like these really started kicking into high gear after the BCH hard fork that increased the block size to 32MB, expanded the default data-carrier-size to 220 bytes, and re-enabled previously disabled Satoshi Opcodes. The last two upgrade features really sparked the start of token projects being built with the BCH protocol. Over the last couple of weeks, news.Bitcoin.com has been reviewing each proposal and testing some of the token platforms that have already been released into the wild. This week we looked at two more unique tokenization ideas that have been recently introduced to BCH supporters.
An Introduction to Recursive Smelting
One interesting project that has not yet been released into the wild is a concept called ‘Recursive Smelting’ an idea authored by the developers Harry Barber, and Chris Novick. The proposal introduced by Barber on August 8 describes a system that allows for provable token burns, token issue escrow, atomic swaps (Bitcoin Cash-to-token), and miners’ fees payable via tokens. Furthermore, the developers say that the project uses a protocol called DAG and also uses a cryptographic method called ‘SNARKs.’
“In Recursive Smelting (RS) the primary objectives are to create a permissionless protocol using on-chain data, while maximizing SPV compatibility and avoiding invasive protocol changes — Our proposal originates in the DAG category and then breaks from it using novel cryptographic techniques — specifically Succinct Non-interactive ARguments of Knowledge (SNARKs),” explains the RS introductory. “An RS token’s ledger is a collection of transactions adhering to one of three primitive transaction formats.”
Each primitive transaction interfaces with one another, creating a subgraph within the graph of all Bitcoin transactions. These primitive transactions are the genesis transaction, minting transactions, and ownership transactions. Ownership transactions are required to conserve token quantity while minting transactions are not.
The developers of the RS project have published a proof-of-library which has a wallet interface allowing for proof generation and verification required for the Recursive Smelting protocol. The RS creators have also published a white paper and an example implementation as well. Additionally, the developers have published the project’s two-week review which details that RS is getting a lot of development. The team added script design changes, a reference wallet implementation which will possibly use the Electron Cash client. The RS creators still have a lot of work to do, they explain, detailing that the project needs further testing of parsing and validation, decluttering the code, and SNARKs compatibility. “Lastly, we are currently working on a powerful framework for very general smart contracts, based on the foundational principles of RS,” explains Barber on August 22.
Bitcoin Token: Building Tokens and Smart Contracts Using the BCH Protocol
Another project introduced on Friday, August 24 called ‘Bitcoin Token’ aims to build tokens and smart contracts by using the BCH protocol. The Bitcoin Token project was launched by a software developer named Clemens, and he aims to release his new platform by the end of the year.
“Bitcoin Token is a tool for developers to build tokens and other smart contracts on top of Bitcoin Cash — It grants the programmer very low-level access, think of it as writing smart contracts in assembly code,” Clemen’s website explains.
You can also use a pre-defined library and launch a token in a few lines of Javascript — We are in prototype stage and plan to launch towards the end of the year.
Clemens says the project is based on the well-known and “battle-tested” concepts behind colored coins. Although the developer says his project expands by featuring smart contracts that can be “defined by allowing the issuer/developer to customize the tokens behaviour in Javascript.”
“Bitcoin Token is as scalable as the underlying blockchain. Issuing a new token or sending tokens to another user can be done within seconds,” the website notes.
Receiving tokens is usually the bottleneck for token solutions on top of Bitcoin — However our solution guaranties lightning fast token validation with minimal storage overhead.
The Bitcoin Cash community seems to be fine with the large focus on token projects and the variety of concepts and projects launched so far. Right now each project is in its very earliest stages but some are further ahead of others as far as SPV compatibility, and are user-friendly so anyone can make tokens, not just people who are savvy with command prompts. Recursive Smelting and Bitcoin Token are in even earlier stages, but still have some innovative ideas behind them, and there is nothing wrong with developers testing their concepts prior to production.
What do you think about Recursive Smelting and the Bitcoin Token project? Let us know your thoughts about these two ideas in the comment section below.
Images via Shutterstock, The Recursive Smelting project, and the Bitcoin Token project.
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