A brief understanding of the Eths protocol

Author: Blue Fox Notes Source: X (formerly Twitter) @lanhubiji

The Ethscriptions Inscription Protocol (hereinafter referred to as the eths protocol) is a protocol for building and sharing native digital assets on the Ethereum chain. Ethscriptions inscriptions began in 2016. However, the birth of the ETHS protocol itself was inspired by the BTC inscription protocol, which was launched by Tom Lehman. To date, there are more than 2 million inscriptions on Ethereum.

The Eths protocol is not only bringing inscriptions on the Ethereum chain, but also trying to bring new explorations to the Ethereum L1 scale. In simple terms, it has several key points:

Leveraged calldata on Ethereum

The ETHS protocol uses Ethereum transaction call data calldata to store data, rather than smart contracts, and has the opportunity to reduce fees. So, how is calldata exploited? In a normal transfer transaction, the user sends ETH and calldata as a "comment feild", which is generally left blank. If you interact with a smart contract, the "Function Name and Parameters" information will be added to the calldata field. EthScriptions uses a similar approach, encoding data into CallData, but not for smart contracts, it has the concept of a dumb contract (the name is also interesting, in contrast to smart contracts). In this way, Ethscription is completely on the Ethereum chain, achieving permanent existence, suitable for building native digital assets on Ethereum, etc.

No smart contracts are used

As mentioned above, it has its own concept of dumb contract, that is, the ETHS protocol itself does not use smart contracts for storage and execution. It calculates state by applying deterministic protocol rules to Ethereum transaction call data calldata. In short, the ETHS protocol uses calldata to bypass smart contracts for on-chain data storage, trying to achieve a lower cost storage method.

ESC VM brings a new narrative

Regarding the eths protocol, the ESC VM (ESC Virtual Machine) proposed by ESIP-4 is a development that everyone pays more attention to, because it carries greater imagination. Specifically, ESC VM is a new protocol built on top of ethscriptions. It works with EthScriptions as computer instructions (where EthScriptions have a new purpose) that allow the user to interact with a specific program.

The specific program here is mainly dumb Contract. That is, ESC VM+Dumb Contract, you can execute commands, such as creating a new contract, calling an existing contract, etc. In a nutshell, in Ethscriptions, Ethscriptions must be made in a specific format so that they are considered "normal ethscriptions" in order to be recognized by the ESC VM. These ETHS inscriptions can be computer instructions that enable "deployment" and "calling". Deploy creates a new Dumb Contract, and Invoke calls the state change function on an existing Dumb contract. When a dumb contract is deployed, anyone can call its functions.

ESC VM provides an EVM-like environment for dump contracts. However, the ESC VM is not a real virtual machine for the time being, it is only suitable for a specific contract (Dumb Contract) for the time being. The eths protocol has plans to introduce general-purpose computing in the future, which opens up the possibility of a new narrative.

Currently, DUMB Contract does not support direct payment. There is no concept of Ether here, and there is a need to "bridge" Ether to the Dumb Contract via a smart contract. In addition, it does not support arbitrary creation of dumb contracts for the time being. The dumb contract code must be consistent with other Eths protocol rule definitions in the ESIP process.

The Eths protocol is not L2, it is a new extended exploration

eths and L2 explore different technical routes, and there is still a lot of room for development in terms of the current scalability of Ethereum. And importantly, there are certain trade-offs between different technical routes, and there is no question of who to replace for the time being.

For the eths protocol, some relatively simple functions are currently implemented through dumb contract and ESC VM, and its biggest narrative comes from the possibility of general-purpose computing of ESC VM. If there is a real chance to come to this point in the future, for ETHS, there is an opportunity to bring more possibilities for application scenarios, and there is also an opportunity to further enrich and prosper the Ethereum ecosystem.

Source: Golden Finance