As the first Bitcoin unified asset protocol contributed by Domo, the creator of BRC20, Goldinals could potentially lead Bitcoin’s ecosystem into a new unified and explosive era driven by technical innovators.

On January 10, 2025, Nubit, a Bitcoin project focused on native technology development in the Bitcoin ecosystem, launched the “Goldinals” Bitcoin asset protocol (the original protocol whitepaper can be found here).

According to official explanations, the concept of Goldinals was proposed by Domo, the creator of the first token on the Ordinals protocol ($ORDI) and the founder of BRC20. It was technically realized by the Nubit team. This protocol aims to introduce trustless asset management and programmability into the Bitcoin ecosystem, addressing the lack of interoperability between existing Bitcoin asset protocols (such as BRC-20, Runes, Ordinals, etc.), which leads to liquidity fragmentation and security risks.

The slogan of Goldinals is “The Unified Protocol for Bitcoin Assets.”

In other words, Goldinals provides a unified standard for Bitcoin assets, is compatible with existing protocols, and supports more efficient asset creation, management, and interaction functions. This will be an important step for Bitcoin’s ecosystem towards the realm of asset programming.

Nubit, founded by Professor Yu Feng from the University of California, Santa Barbara, aims to build the “Trustless World Computer for Bitcoin.” By utilizing Bitcoin’s native technologies (such as BitVM), Nubit seeks to achieve open scalability and programmability for Bitcoin. Nubit enables developers to build any Bitcoin-native applications, bringing global users into the Bitcoin ecosystem.

Overview of the Design Principles of Goldinals

Goldinals is a native Bitcoin asset protocol designed to break the technical constraints of Bitcoin while providing functionality similar to the mature asset standards on other blockchains, such as Ethereum’s ERC-20.

On Ethereum, developers can leverage the ERC-20 standard to deploy, transfer, mint, and burn tokens using simple APIs. However, the current Bitcoin-based BRC-20 protocol, although attempting to offer similar functionality, heavily relies on off-chain indexers and additional trust assumptions, limiting its decentralization and security.

The Goldinals asset protocol addresses trust and security issues by providing a revolutionary alternative to implement API-like functionalities directly on the Bitcoin blockchain, including:

Deploy: Initialize global parameters of the protocol and create new token instances.

Mint: Increase the token supply and allocate newly minted tokens to specified addresses.

Transfer: Transfer tokens between addresses while ensuring validity checks, such as balance verification.

Burn: Reduce the token supply and permanently remove tokens through on-chain actions.

While the logic of these APIs is similar to ERC-20, implementing these functionalities on Bitcoin requires overcoming the limitations posed by its stateless design and Turing-incomplete scripting language. To address this challenge, Goldinals has designed a refined three-phase state machine process to ensure the legality, transparency, and trustlessness of operations.

Through the three-phase state machine, Goldinals cleverly adapts to Bitcoin’s technical constraints by breaking down each operation into multiple steps while combining on-chain data and Zero-Knowledge Proofs (ZKP) to guarantee the security and trustworthiness of the final confirmed state. This design not only addresses the limitations of Bitcoin’s native technologies for complex operations but also removes the reliance on centralized indexers, ensuring that every token operation can be completed in a trustless environment. The specific steps of Goldinals’ three-phase state machine are as follows:

1.Preparation Phase (Prepare):

In this phase, users declare their intended operation (such as transferring, minting, or burning tokens) through on-chain transactions. The transaction data, including the target address, operation type, and parameters, are written into the Bitcoin blockchain via the OP_RETURN field, ensuring that the data is permanently available and transparent.

This process is akin to filling out a check where the user specifies the recipient, amount, and purpose, but has not yet formally delivered it.

2.Kickoff Phase (Kickoff):

Once a certain number of block confirmations have been reached, the user can submit a “Kickoff Transaction.” This transaction includes:

Submitting Zero-Knowledge Proofs (ZKP): Mathematically prove the legality of the operation, such as confirming sufficient balance or compliance with protocol rules.

Verifying Data: Provide information to prove the on-chain state.

State Update: Clarify the impact of the requested operation on the protocol’s global state.

The Kickoff phase is the core step for operation confirmation, akin to a notary verifying the legality of a check. During this phase, all operation conditions are strictly validated on-chain, and complex computations are verified through the computational power provided by BitVM.

3.Challenge Phase (Challenge):

After the Kickoff phase is completed, the process enters the Challenge phase, where the user’s operation undergoes a security validation period. During this time, any network validator (referred to as a challenger) can verify the validity of the Zero-Knowledge Proofs submitted by the user:

If any illegal operation is discovered, the challenger can dispute the legality of the operation through an on-chain transaction.

If no valid challenges are made, the operation will be formally confirmed and incorporated into the protocol’s global state.

This phase is similar to multiple auditors reviewing the legality of a transaction, where even a single honest challenger can prevent potential fraudulent activities.

Through multi-stage verification, Goldinals successfully overcomes the limitations of Bitcoin’s native technologies. It ensures that all token operations can be performed in a fully decentralized and trust-minimized environment, providing an efficient, transparent, and secure solution for complex asset operations.

This design not only allows developers to build powerful and secure Bitcoin-native applications using Goldinals’ API but also brings a revolution in trust and technology to the entire Bitcoin ecosystem.

Revolutionary Innovation Protocol for Unifying Bitcoin Ecosystem Assets

The launch of Goldinals might usher Bitcoin’s asset ecosystem into a new era of unity and explosive growth.

As a complete version of the ERC-20 standard on Bitcoin, Goldinals is compatible with existing Bitcoin asset protocols (such as BRC-20, Ordinals, Runes, and CAT), while also supporting the development of future Bitcoin assets and applications.

Through decentralized validation and on-chain programmability, Goldinals breaks the dependency on centralized indexers, allowing the Bitcoin asset ecosystem to truly achieve trustlessness and remain native to Bitcoin. After Goldinals, existing Bitcoin applications can add new features or develop new assets without the need to create new protocols. By unifying Bitcoin assets, Goldinals provides the ultimate solution for upgrading the Bitcoin asset ecosystem.

At first glance, Goldinals offers the following notable advantages:

1. Trust Minimization: All operations are verified directly on the Bitcoin blockchain, eliminating the need for centralized indexers or custodial solutions. This ensures complete decentralization.

2. Inherited Bitcoin Security: Goldinals records every token operation directly on the Bitcoin blockchain, relying on Bitcoin’s finality and data availability to avoid the risks associated with Layer 2 protocol interruptions.

3. Native Programmability: With the help of BitVM technology, Goldinals supports complex on-chain logic, including multi-signature wallets, conditional transfers, and token gating. This expands the application scenarios of the Bitcoin protocol.

4. Efficiency and Scalability: By leveraging Zero-Knowledge Proofs (ZKPs) and optimized designs, Goldinals significantly reduces transaction costs while enhancing the speed and scalability of operations. This provides a better experience for both developers and users.

Built on these advantages, Goldinals is not only an upgrade to Bitcoin asset protocols but also serves as the foundational framework for the future development of the Bitcoin asset ecosystem.

Bitcoin 3.0: A New Era of Unification and Decentralization

Goldinals introduces an entirely new trust-minimized token standard, injecting powerful decentralization and programmability into the Bitcoin asset ecosystem. It represents a significant leap in the development of Bitcoin asset protocols. By ensuring compatibility with the existing ecosystem and seamlessly supporting new application scenarios, Goldinals opens up broader possibilities for Bitcoin’s application in the global economy.

Whether it’s issuing custom assets, building a stablecoin system, or enabling decentralized liquidity staking, Goldinals will empower developers and enterprises to explore new frontiers for Bitcoin, heralding the golden age of Bitcoin 3.0.

Goldinals Whitepaper (Original): https://www.nubit.org/Goldinals.pdf

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