In 2023, 3 people met in an RGB group and began to discuss the exciting possibilities of RGB. These 3 were Weldy, Clay, and Biscuits. Each had their own particular interest in RGB. Biscuits, an expert in metaverse andAI technologies often consulted by companies and governments, saw it as a solution to problems he’d discovered in hisresearch. Clay, an artist, developer and experienced crypto project founder, saw it as a great platform for a brand new project, which became PPRGB. Weldy, a writer and veteran Bitcoiner, saw RGB as an answer to the conflict within Bitcoin over Ordinals. RGB could bring NFTs, tokens, DeFi and all the other altcoin “innovations” to Bitcoin – increasing Bitcoin’s userbase and value – but without clogging Bitcoin’s blockchain and driving up transaction fees. (Weldy wrote an article for Bitcoin Magazine on this subject, for those interested).

All 3 friends had recognized that RGB could become an important enhancement to Bitcoin, boosting its scalability, programmability and privacy. Even at that time, it was known that Tether had taken an interest in RGB as a platform for its important stablecoins, and was funding RGB’s development. This suggested that RGB had the major financial backing and user numbers to win the competition to develop a “Layer 2” solution to Bitcoin’s limitations. So, these friends continued their RGB learning and experimentation.

Clay was first to release his own token, PPRGB, on BitMask. This was on RGB version 0.7 or 0.8, which contained some serious bugs. As RGB was under active development at the time, it was expected that these bugs would be fixed in the near future. As Clay enjoys experimenting with new technology, he continued to develop the PPRGB. His project then came to the attention of DaPangDun, a Chinese cryptocurrency researcher who’d also taken a strong interest in RGB. DaPangDun mentioned PPRGB to his large audience, which began an influx of users to Clay’s project.

Noticing that RGB was finally receiving public attention after years of relative obscurity – being largely a projectof interest to Bitcoin developers and investors until that point – Weldy conceived his own project; Single-Use Seal. The project’s motivation was to create an RGB-specific meme and mascot, to serve as RGB’s friendly, welcoming ambassador to the entire crypto world. At that time, RGB was a technical project with little marketing and low public awareness.

Some may ask why a seal was the chosen character. In English, the word “Seal” can refer to either the animal similar to a sea lion or to any kind of binding used to closean object. In RGB, the Single-Use-Seal (acronym SUS) works something like a wax seal on an envelope. Once opened so the message can be read, it cannot be sealed again. This SUS method, invented by Peter Todd, is the cryptographic basis of RGB.

As for Single-Use-Seal the project, its earliest manifestation was a series of 7 photos of ink on paper cartoons uploaded by Weldy to BitMask’s gallery. These drawings developed the Seal character as it interacted with Peter Todd, Biscuits, Clay, Bitcoin’s honeybadger mascot, and so on. Eventually this character was developed into a 10,000 piece NFT collection (NFTs are called UDAs or RGB21s in RGB). Biscuits also contributed greatly to this work by developing an AI solution to write a description of each Seal UDA, based on its traits and the unique combination thereof.

While PPRGB was undeniably the first memecoin project on RGB and so has rightly attracted the biggest audience, being first also has its drawbacks. Acting as a moderator in the PPRGB group during its whitelisting process, Weldy noticed the telltale signs of bot involvement. The use of bots has unfortunately become standard practice in the airdrop farming world. Bot-runners absorb more than their fair share of an asset’s distribution, concentrating ownership instead of democratizing it.

Seeking a way to limit the impact of bots on the Seals airdrop, Weldy remembered his original seal drawings uploaded to BitMask. Bots could certainly spam an unlimited number of entries but, this being the early days of AI image generation, they couldn’t achieve convincing hand-drawn and handwritten effects, especially in the same image. To gain a whitelist position, the Seals community had to make and upload precisely such images. This simple solution ensured as fair a distribution as reasonably possible.

There was another, unexpected benefit to the Seals whitelisting process. Many users drew or painted some impressive images! This spurred the creation of an art contest, in which users could compete for further whitelists by producing high quality art. The results were voted on by the community, until it became clear that many bots were joining in to skew the results, then by a panel of selected judges. Some truly excellent artworks resulted from the contest, and winning artists were chosen to form a new side project, Arctic Friends. This project led to the creation of over 200 fantastic artworks depicting polar animals, which will be auctioned as RGB NFTs once a suitable marketplace is established on mainnet. Around this time, it was also decided to also issue a Seals RGB20 token, with the ticker SUS and a supply of 21 million.

Further whitelist contests were organized to give a chance to those with less artistic ability, including an RGB-based quiz and a quick drawing competition. In the latter, random data points from a set Bitcoin block were matched to certain characteristics of a seal drawing. When the block was mined and the data became know, users had to draw a corresponding seal and upload it as quickly as possible. The quickest entries won further whitelists. Some competitors even went so far as to pre-draw and organize all the hundreds of possible combinations ahead of time to improve their chances!

After all this activity, the Seals project and indeed all RGB-based projects, were faced with a long and unexpected delay, during which the protocol’s complex technical issues were resolved and the solutions tested. This was a difficult lull to endure, bringing to mind Coleridge’s famous poem about The Ancient Mariner becalmed at sea:

Day after day, day after day,
We stuck, nor breath nor motion;
As idle as a painted ship
Upon a painted ocean.

There was one positive for the RGB community arising from this long delay. The fact that the original projects are still all around should speak volumes. And of course, some new friends like Moula and Cato have joined too, which should also say a lot about the future of RGB. Hopefully it’s clear that none of these early RGB projects are out to make a quick buck, unlike so many other crypto teams that rug as soon as they make a little money or their project becomes inconvenient. These early projects stuck around or joined because they believe in RGB and want to see it succeed. And to further set the minds of the Seals community at ease, Weldy committed to burn and / or lock up excess coins and NFTs shortly after their issuance period was concluded.

To continue, after many months RGB’s period of seeming stagnation was finally resolved, albeit in a regrettable way which saw RGB split into two versions; 0.11.1 and 0.12. While it remains to be seen how this situation will ultimately play out, for now Tether’s official endorsement of the 0.11.1 side suggests it’ll attract more users. This is a safe bet, given Tether USD has the highest trading volume of any instrument in the cryptocurrency world. While Seals had originally planned to airdrop its token via BitLight, which ended up on the 0.12 side, and its NFTs via BitMask on the 0.11.1 side, the plan for tokens had to change for various technical reasons.

The Seals token, SUS, was recently airdropped via LNFI and is trading smoothly. It’s intended to offer a bridging service once BitLight’s dex is operational, so that those who prefer their SUS tokens on 0.12 RGB can transfer them. As for the Seal’s NFT collection, the project awaits the readiness of a suitable venue to facilitate their airdrop and trading. It’s hoped that this will arrive within months, if not weeks!

After so long a journey to reach this point, during which many doubted RGB’s promise would ever be realized, it’s incredibly gratifying to see projects finally launching and meeting with success. RGB is still new and fresh and its friendly Seal mascot invites you to dive in and explore it. Perhaps you’ll even find some treasure if you’re lucky!