The Birth of the Red Envelope Concept
It all started with a simple yet profound need – we wanted to make NFTs more playful and more meaningful.
In the early days of the BesCARD project, the team members were pondering the question: Why can’t NFTs be like red envelopes in real life – not only beautiful in appearance but also containing real blessings and value? Traditional NFTs are either purely visual representations or functional tokens, but they rarely combine “emotional value” and “practical value” in a perfect way.
Through comparative analysis, we clearly identified the essential differences between traditional NFTs and BesCARD:
Traditional NFT Characteristics
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Images: Visual artistic expression
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Metadata: Descriptive information
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Ownership Info: Proof of ownership
BesCARD’s Innovative Features
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Images: Visual artistic expression
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Metadata: Descriptive information
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Ownership Info: Proof of ownership
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Built-in Assets: Can store other assets (New Feature)
The Exploration of the Solution
When we began to design BesCARD, we aimed to meet the following conditions:
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Both the red envelope and its monetary value are on-chain and decentralized.
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The assets inside the red envelope can only be operated by the “envelope” owner.
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The built-in assets inside the red envelope are only accessible after the user “unseals” the envelope (to prevent users from extracting the assets and still trading the envelope at its original value).
We explored various existing NFT standards and asset models, comparing them from programming models, transaction efficiency, and transaction costs, among other perspectives. We compared Ethereum with the Nervos CKB ecosystem, and found that CKB’s “Value Storage Layer” concept aligned closely with our red envelope design idea.
When considering delays in on-chain transactions, the UTXO model used by Nervos CKB offers significant advantages. “Chained transactions,” as used in CKB, are like a merchant using a checkbook with linked checks: off-chain, the merchant signs a series of related transactions (e.g., issuing red envelopes to users A, B, and C), and each new transaction inherits and updates the UTXO state of the previous one. This ability allows continuous creation of red envelopes without waiting for the previous transaction to be confirmed on-chain, greatly improving transaction efficiency and, thus, enhancing the user experience.
Additionally, the extremely low transaction gas costs on CKB solve the issue of high fees for users sending small-value red envelopes, which is a common pain point in traditional blockchain systems.
During the implementation process, we discovered that Nervos CKB’s Spore Protocol and Type Burn Lock functionality already met the business requirements for BesCARD. We just needed to focus on implementing the business logic.
On-chain, this essentially forms an ownership relationship chain: the user holds the BesCARD, and the BesCARD holds the assets within the red envelope.
This process closely resembles the act of placing paper money in a red envelope: the user either buys or receives an airdrop of the “red envelope” and can “unseal” it to take out the “money” or give it to another user.
Here’s how these actions map to the technical operations:
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Pack Red Envelope → Create BesCARD + Lock Value
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Send Red Envelope → Transfer BesCARD
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Unseal Red Envelope → Melt BesCARD + Unlock Value
Full Feature Implementation in BesCARD
Based on these mappings, we’ve implemented the full functionality in BesCARD. To make it easier for users to interact, we’ve provided Transfer and Melt functionalities in the BesCARD user dashboard, corresponding to the on-chain actions of “sending red envelopes” and “unsealing red envelopes.”
As fully on-chain assets, once users obtain a “red envelope,” they have full control over its operation. Therefore, the actions of “sending” and “unsealing” the red envelope are not dependent on the BesCARD system. In the future, we will also open-source the tools that support the BesCARD Melt operation, providing users with more flexibility and options.
Future Possibilities
Given the features of Type Burn Lock, there is still a lot of room for creativity in how red envelopes can be used, such as:
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Adding more value to a red envelope
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Red envelope chains (Red envelope “relay”)
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Inserting other types of Digital Ownership Bonds (DOBs) into red envelopes, etc.
The possibilities are vast, and we are excited to continue exploring them!