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"What Are Taproot Assets
Taproot Assets is a new protocol based on the Bitcoin blockchain that leverages the latest Bitcoin upgrade, Taproot, to achieve increased privacy and scalability, providing core functionality for developers to issue, send, receive, and discover assets on the Bitcoin blockchain.
Protocol Overview:
Taproot Assets, formerly known as Taro, is a new Taproot-based protocol that allows for the issuance of assets on the Bitcoin blockchain. These assets can be stored in Lightning Network channels and can be transferred via the existing Lightning Network. The protocol's design aims to prevent blockchain congestion by allowing the creation and movement of unlimited assets within a single chain of transactions.
Privacy and Scalability:
Taproot Assets utilizes the new tree structure of Taproot, allowing developers to embed arbitrary asset metadata within existing outputs. It uses Schnorr signatures to enhance simplicity and scalability, and importantly, it can work with multi-hop transactions on the Lightning Network.
Transactions and Asset Transfer:
Taproot Assets permit the transfer of assets on-chain or through the Lightning Network after being deposited into channels. Participants in Taproot Assets transfers bear the costs of validation and storage by storing Taproot Assets witness data either locally or in information repositories called ""Universes.""
Interoperability with the Lightning Network:
With Taproot Assets, assets can be deposited into Lightning Network channels, and nodes can provide atomic swaps between Bitcoin and Taproot assets. This enables Taproot assets to interoperate with a wider Lightning Network, benefiting from its coverage and reinforcing network effects.
Other Features:
Taproot Assets also enable atomic swaps between assets and BTC, handle unique and non-unique assets and collections, support creative multi-signature and co-signature arrangements, and can create Taproot asset channels and BTC channels in the same UTXO without consuming additional resources.
What Can Taproot Assets Do
Taproot Assets allow the creation and exchange of different assets, such as various types of tokens, on the Bitcoin blockchain. It is a versatile token protocol, which currently focuses on non-fungible token (NFT) use cases. Taproot Assets do not rely on Bitcoin as a full data availability layer, similar to the Lightning Network. Some potential use cases include introducing stablecoins on Taproot Assets, issuing and transferring other tokens on Taproot Assets, asynchronous receiving features, one-to-many token transfers in a single transaction, Taproot assets combined with the Lightning Network for Bitcoin DeFi use cases, and integration with other Bitcoin protocols such as BRC-20, Atomicals, and more.
Differences from Other Bitcoin Meta Protocols
Taproot Assets share similarities with other Bitcoin meta protocols such as Ordinals, BRC-20, Runes, Atomicals, TAP, PIPE, or RGB. They are all UTXO-based, like Runes and PIPE. However, Taproot Assets do not rely on Bitcoin as a complete data availability layer, in contrast to Ordinals, BRC-20, Runes, and PIPE. Users are responsible for storing their data by default, or they can add extra trust assumptions by using off-chain data storage called ""Universes."" This introduces some risks, as losing off-chain data may result in losing your tokens.
Taproot Assets Progress
In recent months of testnet development, early adopters and the team have iterated continuously, minting nearly 2,000 assets on the testnet and syncing their nodes with Universe servers, which serve as repositories for all the information needed for wallet initialization and state download. As of now, Taproot Assets v0.3.0 alpha is the mainnet's alpha version and has started moving toward backward compatibility, meaning no major changes affecting assets issued on the mainnet will be made. Due to Taproot Assets not relying on Bitcoin as a complete data availability layer, it depends on the development of third-party infrastructure, lowering the barriers for non-technical users to participate in the protocol.
About Lightning Labs
Lightning Labs is a company focused on blockchain and Bitcoin technology, primarily on the Bitcoin Lightning Network. In addition to open-source Lightning Network implementations (LND), Lightning Labs offers commercial products and services, such as Lightning Pool (a Lightning Network node pool solution) and Lightning Loop (a service for moving Bitcoin in and out of the Lightning Network).
Summary
From Ordinals to BRC-20, Runes, Atomicals, TAP, PIPE, RGB, and Taproot Assets, the emergence and public attention given to various Bitcoin meta protocols are signs of the growing ecosystem around Bitcoin. Even during a bear market, Bitcoin community builders continue to innovate, bringing some warmth to the market. Taproot Assets' alpha mainnet launch has garnered significant attention, and we look forward to seeing more creative projects and implementations such as Taproot Assets + Ordinals, Taproot Assets + Atomicals, and Taproot Assets + Bitvm in the future." |
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Post time 26-10-2023 11:48:43