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Technical Design

Spore protocol is engineered to embed value into on-chain contents and non-fungible tokens.

Spore is built on the Cell model, an extension of of Bitcoin UTXO, providing enhanced asset ownership and proof-based verification capabilities.

There are two defined cell types: Spore Cell and Spore Cluster Cell, of which Spore cell is the fundamental and the only necessary unit in the protocol. Other cell types are optional and may serve as extension cells, providing extra information to a Spore.

spore-cluster.png

As illustrated above,

  • Multiple Spores cells (Spore #1, #2) can be assigned to a Cluster (Cluster #1)
  • A single Spore cell (Spore #4) can be assigned to a Cluster (Cluster #2)
  • A standalone Spore cell can exist without being associated with any Cluster (Spore #3)
  • A Spore cell cannot be assigned to multiple Clusters

Importantly, Cluster Cells don't contain Spore Cells.

Spore Protocol is anchored around the following key functionalities:

  • Immutable digital asset issuance
  • Permanent on-chain storage
  • Minimized cell specification dedicated for content storage
  • Built-in extensibility on the protocol level

Data structure​

Spore Protocol uses Molecule as its serialization format standard. Basic types used in this standard are described as bellow:

vector Bytes <byte>;
array Bool [byte; 1];
option BoolOpt (Bool);
option BytesOpt (Bytes);

Spore Cell​

Every Spore must follow this data structure:

data:
    content-type: Bytes # String Bytes
    content: Bytes
    # OPTIONAL
    cluster_id: Bytes
type:
    hash_type: "data1"
    code_hash: SPORE_TYPE_DATA_HASH
    args: SPORE_ID
lock:
    <user_defined>
  • content-type - Specifies the format of the content (like image/png) following MIME standards. It can include parameters (e.g., immortal=true for indestructible spore).
  • content - Holds the main content of the Spore.
  • cluster_id - An optional field for categorizing the Spore into a series or collection.
  • type - Type script is set to SPORE_TYPE_DATA_HASH with SPORE_ID as an argument that follows the rules of Type ID script
    • SPORE_ID = hash(this_transaction.inputs[0]) | Output_Index_Of_This_Cell

All the fields in a Spore Cell are immutable once created.

Cluster Cell​

Every Cluster must follow this data structure.

data:
    name: Bytes # String Bytes
    description: Bytes # String Bytes
type:
    hash_type: "data1"
    code_hash: CLUSTER_TYPE_DATA_HASH
    args: CLUSTER_ID
lock:
    <user_defined>
  • name - Represents the name of the Spore Cluster.
  • description - Provides a textual description of the Cluster.
  • type - Type script is set to CLUSTER_TYPE_DATA_HASH with CLUSTER_ID as an argument that follows the rules of Type ID script
    • CLUSTER_ID = hash(this_transaction.inputs[0]) | Grouputput_index_of_this_cell

A Cluster Cell is indestructible and immutable once created.

info

The key words “MUST”, “MUST NOT”, “REQUIRED”, “SHALL”, “SHALL NOT”, “SHOULD”, “SHOULD NOT”, “RECOMMENDED”, “MAY”, and “OPTIONAL” in this document are to be interpreted as described in RFC 2119.