#CKB助力比特币生态I think: CKB is the next CFX that will grow 10 times
wdctll: Five years ago, when the CKB mainnet was launched, I printed out the white paper and read it several times, and I was very excited. They have always insisted on the POW+UTXO route, and their goals are very ambitious.
However, the era of ckb has never arrived in the past five years.
The btckb plan is really a blessing in disguise.
The last wave of Bitcoin ecosystem explosion was inscriptions, and the inscriptions were basically meme coins.
The next wave of Bitcoin ecosystem explosion may no longer be these inscription meme coins, but Bitcoin L2 is very likely. Currently, the hottest ones are Merlin and B2, and there are dozens of other L2s, most of which are EVM stitching monsters.
Neither Merlin nor B2 will have a low opening price, and large funds staking for mining will not yield very high returns. Opportunities like the last wave of Ordi and Sats may be gone.
As for the next wave of inscriptions, apart from the leading ones, most meme coins related to inscriptions are unlikely to rise again.
In the market, CKB is likely the only Bitcoin Layer2 that insists on PoW + UTXO while having deep technological foundations and years of accumulation.
CKB may just be the hidden gem of the vast sea. It was listed on Binance years ago, most coins are fully circulating, and it just halved its production, with a market cap of only 200 million dollars, leaving enormous potential.
Reflecting on CKB's journey over the years, I have mixed feelings. The birth of CKB can be said to have come at the wrong time, as most of the market shifted to PoS and account models, while it insisted on PoW + UTXO, which was not understood by most industry insiders. However, with the rise of Bitcoin inscriptions and the resulting Layer2 craze, looking back, the timing of CKB's birth was indeed fortuitous. First, as a PoW chain, it had to endure the first four difficult years (network stability, security, high inflation pressure), and just after the first halving, the network has been running securely (0 faults). At this point, the favorable conditions for Bitcoin Layer2 emerged, which is the timing; secondly, after these four years of development, the tools for developers are basically ready, and the team has accumulated rich experience in Cell (extended UTXO) programming, which can help new developers fully utilize CKB's features for best practices, which is the geographical advantage; lastly, the core team of SeeDAO joined the BTCKB program for operation, using their rich operational experience to present CKB as the ideal Bitcoin Layer2 to the outside world, which is the human factor. Without this accumulation over the past four years, even if the wind of Bitcoin Layer2 blew now, CKB might not have had any part in it. CKB, the most anticipated Bitcoin Layer2, launched in November 2019, adopts PoW consensus mechanism and UTXO model, being completely isomorphic to Bitcoin. Additionally, CKB has the Axon framework, which allows for 'one-click chain issuance'.
In the current battle for Layer2 solutions, especially in the sidechain arena, CKB is considered the most promising due to its unmatched advantages in security, expanding Bitcoin's programming capabilities, technological accumulation, and ecosystem.
1. First and foremost is security. Sidechains are independent blockchains that do not inherit the security of the main chain, so many sidechain projects often suffer from centralization due to too few nodes. From the very beginning, CKB adopted the same, time-tested PoW consensus mechanism as Bitcoin, maximizing security and decentralization.
2. CKB's mining algorithm, Eaglesong, was independently developed. After April 2020, CKB successfully transitioned to the era of ASIC mining, overcoming the most dangerous moments for PoW chains. The mining machines currently used for CKB are produced by Bitmain, the largest ASIC mining machine manufacturer in the world. Currently, CKB's total network hash rate is about 158 PH/s, successfully experiencing the first mining output halving in November last year.
3. In terms of expanding Bitcoin's programming capabilities, CKB has generalized the UTXO model and named it the Cell model. Like UTXO, a Cell is also a transaction output, but it generalizes the amount in UTXO into two components: capacity and data, thus transforming a space originally for storing integers into one that can store arbitrary data. Additionally, the data structure of a Cell includes LockScript and TypeScript; the former primarily reflects ownership, while the latter allows for the customization of many rich functions, such as the Covenant (restrictive clauses) feature that is not yet available on Bitcoin. In the scripts of Cells, developers can also specify cryptographic primitives based on their own needs, offering great flexibility. In summary, the Cell model inherits the basic philosophy of Bitcoin's UTXO, making it easy for CKB to inherit Bitcoin's simplicity and security, while through clever modifications, granting Cell the ability to support smart contracts.
4. In addition to the highly flexible Cell model, CKB's virtual machine is also very powerful. It adopts the open instruction set RISC-V, allowing developers to use any language to develop smart contracts, as long as they compile it into RISC-V binary format using the appropriate compiler. This not only makes it efficient but also allows for the direct implementation of various cryptographic algorithms, whether it is Bitcoin's original Secp256k1 or the later introduced Schnorr, which can be directly ported to run on the CKB blockchain.
5. In terms of user experience, the CKB mainnet is fully compatible with BTC addresses and wallets, allowing users from the Bitcoin ecosystem to seamlessly enter the CKB ecosystem. The inscription protocol Omiga on CKB already supports the Bitcoin wallet UniSat, enabling users from the Bitcoin ecosystem to directly deploy, mint, and transfer inscription assets on the CKB chain using the UniSat wallet. In contrast, for those EVM sidechains with account models, users have to switch wallets when transitioning from the Bitcoin ecosystem to the EVM sidechain, leading to a very fragmented user experience.
6. The over four years of technological accumulation and gradual improvement of infrastructure is also one of the reasons why CKB deserves attention. On one hand, CKB has the Axon framework for 'one-click chain issuance', allowing various Bitcoin inscription communities, such as Ordi, Sats, and Rats, to easily launch their own BTC Layer3 on CKB. On the other hand, the development tools for CKB are increasingly完善, with various toolkits and SDKs contributed by the core development team and active contributions from community teams, such as the PW SDK developed by the Lay2 team for building CKB dApps, and the Kuai developed by the MagickBase team aimed at significantly reducing the development threshold for dApps.
7. In terms of ecosystem, CKB is also far ahead of other sidechains. The JoyID wallet uses biometric technology (fingerprint/face scan) to create and manage wallets, allowing users to utilize the wallet without any blockchain knowledge, and supports multiple chains, making it more powerful than the MetaMask wallet and comparable in user experience to Web2 applications. CKB has its own DID system (.bit), which also supports multiple chains and Passkey, being more powerful and compatible than Ethereum's domain service ENS, and has already secured $13 million in Series A funding. The inscription protocol Omiga and the NFT protocol Spore Protocol, which completely stores data on-chain, have both been launched. Other infrastructures like DEX and cross-chain protocols are in the testing phase and will be launched soon. The decentralized full-chain liquidity protocol Khalani, which provides infrastructure for DeFi, is also in the testing phase.
In short, CKB, with its excellent security, innovative technical solutions, rich technical accumulation, and an increasingly完善 ecosystem, will become the most anticipated Bitcoin Layer2. CKB will not only provide new possibilities for expanding Bitcoin's programming capabilities but also offer developers and users a secure, flexible, and user-friendly blockchain environment. As technology matures further and the ecosystem continues to develop, CKB will undoubtedly play an increasingly important role in exploring the forefront of Bitcoin Layer2.
