0xMech

Eternal Inscription Chain - Eternal Inscription on the Chain#

intro#

This article should have been published before Valentine's Day, but I haven't updated for a long time, and since it's almost 2024, I decided to write this tutorial to teach everyone how to directly inscribe their New Year wishes or blessings on the blockchain.

The essence of blockchain is a distributed ledger, where the same information is stored on computers around the world. In theory, as long as the blockchain nodes are still running, the data on the chain can be permanently preserved. On January 3, 2009, when Satoshi Nakamoto created the Bitcoin genesis block (block height 0), he inscribed on it "The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks." The news of Zhao Liying and Feng Shaofeng's marriage was also recorded on the Ethereum chain at a height of 6529151. Inscribing important moments or messages on the chain is a very romantic thing. I named it "Blockchain of Eternal Love" or "Eternal Inscription Chain", the former records love or "digital marriage certificates", and the latter records unforgettable events. Below, I will teach you how to inscribe.

Choosing the Chain#

Since we are inscribing on the chain, the first thing we need to do is choose a blockchain. In my opinion, when choosing a chain for inscription, we should consider the following two points:

1. Well-known public chains - theoretically, the more famous the public chain, the better it can preserve information permanently. The best choice would be the Bitcoin chain.
2. Transaction fees or gas fees - any transaction requires payment of fees, and inscription is essentially a transaction with some additional information attached. Therefore, we need to consider the transaction fees of various chains. Recently, inscriptions have become popular, and the transaction fees on the Bitcoin chain are too high. Therefore, I used Dogecoin for demonstration.

I personally recommend ETH, BSC, and Polygon chains. Of course, the same applies to other chains. You can choose freely. Gas fees: ETH > BSC > Polygon.

Inscription Data#

Of course, if you think about it carefully, you will realize that if a ledger stores so many copies, the data of this ledger itself should not be very large, otherwise storage and transmission would become a big problem. Indeed, the ledger itself is not large, and each transaction is very concise. Here is an example of a Dogecoin transaction data:

Therefore, the data inscribed on it cannot be very large either. In the image, the "script_hex" or "6a3430783332333033323334323036383631373037303739323034653635373732303539363536313732323036323739323037393739" is the data I inscribed. "6a" represents the operation command, "34" is also a hexadecimal number, indicating that the following 52 bytes are the data part. The remaining "30783332333033323334323036383631373037303739323034653635373732303539363536313732323036323739323037393739" is a total of 104 digits, exactly 52 bytes. When converted from hexadecimal to characters, it becomes "0x32303234206861707079204e65772059656172206279207979". Here, "0x" also represents hexadecimal. If we remove "0x" and convert it again, we can get the original data I inscribed, "2024 happy New Year by yy".

This is my New Year's wish. The data is very short. Each chain has a different limit for inscription, but the principle is to keep it concise.

Inscription Steps#

Here, I assume that everyone knows how to buy and withdraw coins and how to use wallets. If you don't know, I suggest you ask me directly for help with inscription. Registering on an exchange, KYC, buying coins, and withdrawing coins are too cumbersome, and the loss from depositing and withdrawing is not low. It's not cost-effective just for inscription.

Here are the specific steps:

1. Prepare a wallet that supports inscription. I recommend the TokenPocket wallet. Most other wallets do not support writing additional information. The imToken wallet only supports a few chains for writing (please send money to 0xfaa0a85dc23aaa54bb48c2da634a871e4126113b for TokenPocket).
2. Native tokens - deposit the native token of the chosen chain into the wallet, such as ETH for the ETH chain, MATIC for the Polygon chain, and BNB for the BSC chain. In theory, inscription that does not support non-native token transactions.
3. Use this website to convert the characters you want to inscribe into hexadecimal. See the image below.

I converted my 2024 wish into hexadecimal characters.
4. Open the wallet and select "Transfer".

5. Enter the recipient address. Since inscription is done on a transaction, you need to generate a transaction by transferring to another wallet you own.
6. In the advanced features, select "op_return" and enter the hexadecimal characters with "0x" added at the beginning. Enter the transfer amount, select the miner fee (transaction fee), and confirm the transaction.

Conclusion#

There is a fundamental difference between inscription and NFT. NFTs are actually stored in centralized or decentralized storage servers and are not directly written on the chain. On the chain, only the content or address of the NFT is written, telling us where to find it. This does not rule out the possibility of the NFT itself being deleted (including decentralized storage). Inscription, on the other hand, directly writes information on the chain, theoretically making it last longer than NFTs.

Finally, the new year is coming soon. I wish you all a happy new year! Everyone can inscribe their holiday wishes or their feelings for "someone" on the chain, achieving a more lasting "love chain" than diamonds.