Getting started for devs
Learn how to Asteroid Protocol works, deploy your own Asteroid indexer, access public APIs and more.
Introduction
With Asteroids, anyone can permanently publish content directly onto the Cosmos Hub blockchain where it will live on in perpetuity
Developed in collaboration between Delphi Labs and the Astroport Foundation, the framework brought inscriptions and fungible tokens to the world’s largest Cosmos blockchain by market cap — a chain that doesn’t natively support tokens or permissionless smart contracts by design
The open source framework includes an Asteroid indexer, explorer, API, Cosmos Fungible Token (CFT-20) specification, a token deployer and minting tool, and front-end/back-end software
Anyone can use their Leap or Keplr wallet to begin inscribing data, images and text and/or minting CFT-20 tokens — including the world’s first CFT-20, ROIDS — at asteroidprotocol.io
As a metaprotocol framework, Asteroids are substantially more powerful than alternative approaches, which have largely relied on Cosmos SDK’s “memo” field and do not support metaprotocol-like functionality or larger files up to ~550kb
All software and specifications are experimental, unaudited and not “endorsed” by any entity including Delphi Labs and the Astroport Foundation. Use at your own risk
Metaprotocols
The Asteroid Protocol is a generalized metaprotocol framework. That means anyone can use it to create their own Asteroid protocol. To date, contributors have already defined several Asteroid metaprotocols:
The Cosmos Inscriptions Specification (or "arbitrary content inscriptions"): With arbitrary content inscriptions, users can publish virtually any sort of data that a browser can display… from JPGs to videos, text to JSON, HTML and even online games… directly on the Hub. File sizes can be as large as ~550kb.
Cosmos Fungible Tokens (CFT-20): A way of deploying, minting and transferring fungible tokens on Cosmos Hub, which does not natively support fungible tokens by design.
Asteroid NFTs: With the NFT metaprotocol, users can create collections of arbitrary content inscriptions.
Asteroid marketplace: A framework for swapping inscriptions on-chain. Asteroidprotocol.io utilizes this framework to enable swapping of inscriptions in the inscriptions marketplace and tokens in the token marketplace.
Token bridge: A framework for bridging CFT-20s from Cosmos Hub to Neutron where they're minted as TokenFactory coins (and therefore have full IBC compatibility).
The Asteroid framework is fully extensible as well, meaning anyone can define and launch their own metaprotocol on Cosmos Hub.
Asteroid Toolkit
An Asteroid explorer and minting tool is live at asteroidprotocol.io. The protocol’s release also included the following:
Specifications for the Asteroid metaprotocol framework, arbitrary inscriptions and CFT-20 tokens
An open-source indexer
An open-source API
A minting tool and explorer live at asteroidprotocol.io
An open-source front-end and backend for deploying your own Asteroid explorer
All these tools can be found in the Asteroid Github repository, and we encourage you to begin building on top of Asteroids now.
Important links
Asteroidprotocol.io: Create or swap your own NFTs or tokens that will live on Cosmos Hub for as long as the chain exists
Ideas for builders: Check out a list of cool things we’d love to see built on Asteroid Protocol
Grant application: Need some cash and guidance to build out an idea on Asteroid Protocol? Consider applying for an Asteroid Grant!
Asteroid Protocol TypeScript SDK: Comes with a command-line tool that surfaces all necessary metaprotocol operations
API Endpoint: Use GraphQL to query the Asteroid API directly. Or navigate to https://www.graphqlbin.com/ to explore everything the API has to offer. Check out this video (or read the FAQs) to see some sample API queries.
Custom Frontend integration example: Download a demo app that shows you how to integrate @asteroid-protocol/sdk with Next.js and CosmosKit.
Github: Download the open-source indexer and review the specs that determine how Asteroid Protocol works
Asteroidhub.xyz: A community-run site highlighting the art-based collections on Asteroid Protocol
Launch Article: Learn about the history and original creators of Asteroid Protocol
Asteroid Devs Telegram group: A Telegram group for builders on Asteroid Protocol
Asteroid Telegram group: A general Telegram group for those interested in Asteroid Protocol
Asteroid X/Twitter: Stay on top of the latest news and highlights from Asteroid Protocol
Run Asteroid Protocol locally
Instructions to run Asteroid Protocol locally are maintained in Github: https://github.com/astroport-fi/asteroid-local.
The Asteroid Protocol API
You can use GraphQL to query the public Asteroid API via the public endpoint at https://new-api.asteroidprotocol.io/v1/graphql. You can also query the API directly in your browser using publicly-available GraphQL tool such as Apollo Graph. Visit the Asteroid Protocol API page to learn how and see examples of common queries.
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