Recently, the popularity of the Ordinals protocol has aroused everyone's interest in exploring the Bitcoin ecosystem. In fact, before the Ordinals protocol, there was a smart contract system that could issue tokens and NFTs on Bitcoin, and it was RGB.
RGB was originally conceived by Giacomo Zucco (BHB Network) in 2016 as a "non-blockchain-based asset system" and was backed by the Poseidon Group around 2017. Since 2019, Dr. Maxim Orlovsky of Pandora Core AG has been the main designer and contributor to the RGB protocol, designing and implementing more than 95% of its code and underlying standards.
In simple terms, RGB is a scalable and confidential smart contract system, which can be thought of as a layer 2 or layer 3 technology working on top of Bitcoin. RGB smart contracts run in a client-side verification paradigm, which means all data is kept outside of Bitcoin transactions, which allows the system to run on top of the Lightning Network without any changes to the Lightning Network protocol, and is also a high-level protocol Scalability and privacy lay the groundwork.
Using RGB, it is possible to create a contract that defines rights to an asset. Assign assets to one or more UTXOs and specify how ownership of those assets can be transferred. A contract can be created from a set of templates (RGB Schema), and the creator of the contract only needs to adjust the parameters and owner rights.
As a smart contract system, RGB differs from both Bitcoin-based (Colored coins, Counterparty, OMNI) and non-Bitcoin (Ethereum, EOS, etc.) smart contract approaches:
RGB separates the concepts of smart contract issuer, state owner, and state evolution.
RGB keeps smart contract code and data off-chain.
RGB uses the blockchain as the state commitment layer and Bitcoin Script as the ownership control system; while the evolution of smart contracts is defined by the off-chain model.
Therefore, it can issue and manage highly scalable, programmable and different types of private assets, and can also be applied to many industries outside the financial field. Currently, RGB can support the following events:
Issue fungible assets (RGB20).
Different forms of bearer rights (voting, governance model, etc.).
Issue NFT (RGB121), including tokenized artwork, game skins, collectibles, educational certificates, etc.
Decentralized digital identity, roaming profiles and key management.
Sophisticated rights management, accounting systems and utility tokens that go beyond even the financial world: electricity, medical records, logistics, etc.
In 2021, RGB released the first beta version, and contributors such as Pandora Prime launched the first user-oriented products: MyCitadel Wallet (a multi-platform wallet supporting RGB), RGBex Browser (a code issued in the RGB protocol Coins and NFTs) and the Bitcoin Pro Asset Issuance Tool (which can create, issue, rebrand, burn tokens, etc.) to drive adoption of RGB. On June 13, 2022, RGB released its first "consensus level" document, allowing people to build their own products and solutions based on this document, providing greater assurance that the protocol is valid and that it will not be changed significantly. Currently, in addition to the MyCitadel wallet, there are three other wallets that support RGB:
Iris Wallet ( GitHub - Play Store) : Android wallet for issuing, spending and receiving RGB assets
BitMask ( GitHub): a browser extension to access Bitcoin decentralized applications using the RGB protocol
Shiro Wallet ( GitHub) : wallet server for RGB protocol
For more information on RGB technology, check out thisdatabase。
