Table of Contents:

· What is NoScription, the gasless mining?

· The "Lottery" feature of NoScription

· NoScription accused of stealing computing power for mining

· NoScription: We will not abuse anyone's computing power

On the evening of January 1, 2024, Nostr's first inscription, NoScription, officially opened with zero mining fees. "Nostr", "first inscription", and "free mint" - these three words put together undoubtedly make NoScription the most talked-about project on the first day of the new year.

If you want to participate in NoScription, you can choose from the wallets Alby, OKX, or ONEKEY. Among them, Alby wallet can achieve fully automatic mining after selecting "remember selection" during the minting process. However, it is worth noting that currently Alby wallet can only be registered with an invitation code. Users who have not created an Alby wallet early on can only choose OKX or ONEKEY.

What is NoScription, the gasless mining?

NoScription is the first inscription protocol of Nostr, which uses Nostr NIP13 PoW for mining. Nostr inscription signs JSON-formatted text messages, and upon completion of the signature, ownership of the inscription is obtained.

According to github, NIP13 defines a method for generating and interpreting Nostr proof-of-work tickets. Proof-of-work (PoW) is a method of adding a computational proof-of-work to a note. This is an anonymous proof that can be universally verified by all relays and clients with minimal code. The proof can be used as a means of deterring spam.

NOSS total supply is 21 million, with 10 tokens per card and a total of 2.1 million cards. Unlike other inscriptions, the brand new empty wallet can also participate in NoScription mining without any cost. After minting, transfer and market functions will be enabled.

As for why it can be completely free, let me briefly introduce the Nostr protocol here.

Nostr was initially proposed by developer @Fiatjaf, and is an open-source social network protocol consisting of multiple clients and relays. Its full name is "Notes and Other Stuff Transmitted by Relays", indicating the importance of relays in the Nostr protocol.

Relay is a server node of the Nostr protocol, responsible for receiving, storing, and forwarding user messages without reviewing or modifying their content. Users are free to choose Relays and authorize them to forward information to other clients or Relays. Even if some Relays fail, the entire network can still operate stably. In the Nostr protocol, each message sent by a user needs to be signed with a private key before being sent to the Relay. Other users can retrieve these messages by searching the Relay and use the client to verify their authenticity.

In simple terms, the data in the Nostr protocol is not recorded on the blockchain. This means that if the data on the Relay is lost, the corresponding Nostr information will also disappear.

Therefore, since Nostr is not related to blockchain, mint signs the plaintext text with Nostr public key, and the signed content is submitted to the relay for storage, and then data retrieval and confirmation are performed. However, it is worth noting that the double-spending problem of assets still exists.

NoScription's "Lottery" Gameplay

Minutes before the start of the event, many community members reported that the "mint" interface kept "spinning". In response, NoScription officials stated that "the current issue is that the Arbitrum RPC node is receiving too much traffic, causing most requests to be blocked."

One hour later, the official tweeted again, stating that the node issue had been resolved. However, the real problem has just begun.

NoScription claims to be a "0gas fur project". After the mint function is normal, there are initially three different judgments each time mint is performed, namely the blue "Found nonce (pushing event)", the green "Mint Event Pushed! (mint event has been pushed)" and the red "Request failed". However, after receiving the green "mint event has been pushed" prompt, the user's balance is displayed incorrectly, and it is impossible to confirm whether the mint was successful.

Later, some community members received the fourth type of judgment prompt "Miner" and pointed out that this prompt truly represents a successful minting.

At this point, many people began to speculate about the true gameplay of NoScription. The general consensus in the community is that essentially, the green prompt is valid, but you need to confirm mint for N of the greens in each block. For example, if there are ten thousand greens in each block around the world, you need to select one winner (yellow prompt) from these ten thousand. However, the yellow prompt only represents your eligibility for the lottery, and this opens up the second "lottery". After winning, the yellow prompt becomes green "success" again.

NoScription accused of stealing computing power for mining

According to the official mining mechanism, in simple terms, the entire mining process is similar to BTC block generation, where all computing power competes with each other at the same time. Additionally, the inscriptions are chain-based and can only be created one by one.

According to the NoScription whitepaper, a maximum of 4 mints per second are considered valid. Therefore, it will take at least 6 days to mine the total amount of 2.1 million NoScription. As of the time of writing, the progress of NoScription is 1.73%.

Behind this complex gameplay is the consumption of the computing power of each participating mint user's computer. Many community members have posted photos and videos of their smoking computer hosts on social media platforms, accusing NoScription of "stealing" players' computing power to mine Bitcoin. Due to the extremely low probability of successful minting, the balance query page of most players has reported errors, and various meme images have also circulated in the community.

NoScription: We will not abuse anyone's computing power

With the increasing spread of the phrase "stealing computing power to mine Bitcoin," NoScription officials clarified on social media platform in a post that "our mining is based on Nostr NIP13 PoW and has nothing to do with Bitcoin mining. We will not abuse anyone's computing power."

However, this clarification did not bring any improvement. Angry community members still posted pictures and videos of smoking computers in the comments below the tweet, and there were even some whistleblowers. NoScription has not provided any further explanation for this.

Welcome to join the official BlockBeats community:

Telegram Subscription Group: https://t.me/theblockbeats

Telegram Discussion Group: https://t.me/BlockBeats_App

Official Twitter Account: https://twitter.com/BlockBeatsAsia