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Ethereum users are being given a fresh way to create nonfungible tokens (NFTs) and other digital assets on the blockchain following the launch of a new protocol called "Ethscriptions." Launched on June 17 by music website Genius.com's co-founder Tom Lehman, Ethscriptions aims to revolutionize Ethereum-based digital asset creation and was quickly met with a high degree of enthusiasm, generating almost 30,000 Ethscriptions within the first 18 hours. Taking inspiration from the popular Bitcoin (BTC) Ordinals protocol — where assets are known as “inscriptions” — Ethscriptions promises to enhance the way digital assets are minted on the Ethereum network. The Protocol: Leveraging Ethereum's Calldata for Improved Minting Lehman, who is also known by the pseudonym Middlemarch on Twitter, declared the project a "huge success." Ethscriptions employs Ethereum's "calldata," which refers to the data held within a smart contract, to allow for a "cheaper" and "more decentralized" minting process compared to conventional smart contract-based methods. At present, the protocol limits users to image-only inscriptions, but Lehman assures that Ethscriptions will accommodate different file types in the future. Current protocol specifications permit users to "ethscribe" any image provided it's less than 96 kilobytes in size. Lehman’s first project on the Ethscriptions protocol, the "Ethereum Punks," witnessed a significantly positive response from the community. All 10,000 assets were claimed almost instantaneously, reinforcing the positive acceptance of the protocol by the community. Challenges and Potential: Navigating the Ethereum Ecosystem Despite the initial success, the project's launch caused so much user activity that the API interface for the official Ethscriptions website temporarily crashed, indicating possible infrastructure challenges. Given the existing infrastructure that enables the creation of NFTs and other digital assets on the Ethereum network, it remains uncertain whether Ethscriptions will achieve the same level of popularity as Bitcoin Ordinals. Within six months, the total number of Ordinals inscribed on Bitcoin skyrocketed from zero to 10 million, driven primarily by users' fascination with minting assets and the novelty of minting entirely new tokens through the BRC-20 token standard on the Bitcoin network. The launch of the Ethscriptions protocol on Ethereum presents a significant development for digital asset creation on the blockchain. The Ethereum ecosystem continues to evolve and innovate, and it becomes clearer over this period that initiatives like Ethscriptions could potentially introduce new dynamics and possibilities. While the immediate impact is promising, the long-term success of this novel approach to asset creation remains to be seen. Disclaimer: This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

The whole of the cryptocurrency world is currently fussing over recent events regarding Bitcoin, and rightly so. The price drop of $1,000 per BTC and the pulled release of the planned SegWit2x hardfork has kept Bitcoin firmly in the public eye. In the meantime however, Ethereum has been making slow and steady improvements and growing its own network. Ethereum, the second largest cryptocurrency, has seen an increase in usage recently as the ICO world grows and the new ERC20 and ERC223 tokens were born. The Ethereum Foundation recently published a report that indicated the network had processed around 44% more transactions than Bitcoin; a statistic showing the true potential of Ethereum’s intuitive system. In the same period, the number of pending transactions for Bitcoin has fluctuated from 39,000 to 47,000, while the number for Ethereum has been stable - between 30 and 300. Ethereum released the ZK-SNARK protocol alongside their Byzantium hardfork and this move was criticized by some insiders because of the risk from attack it is believed to be open to from quantum computers. It had been thought that the fork would cause a sudden boom in adoption from Wall Street, however it is now believed that the risk from quantum computers has kept it steady. Ethereum’s founder Vitalik Buterin has released a paper recently that indicates a conceptualised ZK-STARK protocol designed to protect a full zero-knowledge transaction from attack from anything; even from a quantum computer. This new protocol relies solely on hashes and information theory, rather than the ‘trusted setup’ that ZK-SNARK relies upon. According to Buterin, while this upgraded anonymity is necessary, it does come at a data cost; from 288 bytes to a few hundred kilobytes. However, in applications where the extra protection is critical, the additional data usage would provide something unique to Ethereum: truly secure and anonymous transaction processing.

The whole of the cryptocurrency world is currently fussing over recent events regarding Bitcoin, and rightly so. The price drop of $1,000 per BTC and the pulled release of the planned SegWit2x hardfork has kept Bitcoin firmly in the public eye. In the meantime however, Ethereum has been making slow and steady improvements and growing its own network. Ethereum, the second largest cryptocurrency, has seen an increase in usage recently as the ICO world grows and the new ERC20 and ERC223 tokens were born. The Ethereum Foundation recently published a report that indicated the network had processed around 44% more transactions than Bitcoin; a statistic showing the true potential of Ethereum’s intuitive system. In the same period, the number of pending transactions for Bitcoin has fluctuated from 39,000 to 47,000, while the number for Ethereum has been stable - between 30 and 300. Ethereum released the ZK-SNARK protocol alongside their Byzantium hardfork and this move was criticized by some insiders because of the risk from attack it is believed to be open to from quantum computers. It had been thought that the fork would cause a sudden boom in adoption from Wall Street, however it is now believed that the risk from quantum computers has kept it steady. Ethereum’s founder Vitalik Buterin has released a paper recently that indicates a conceptualised ZK-STARK protocol designed to protect a full zero-knowledge transaction from attack from anything; even from a quantum computer. This new protocol relies solely on hashes and information theory, rather than the ‘trusted setup’ that ZK-SNARK relies upon. According to Buterin, while this upgraded anonymity is necessary, it does come at a data cost; from 288 bytes to a few hundred kilobytes. However, in applications where the extra protection is critical, the additional data usage would provide something unique to Ethereum: truly secure and anonymous transaction processing.