Written by: Golem, Odaily Odaily
In recent days, the Bitcoin ecosystem has become increasingly lively, and various sectors have made some substantial progress after several months of long construction. Users with a keen sense of smell have already turned their attention back to the Bitcoin ecosystem, hoping to tap into this wave of wealth opportunities in the Bitcoin ecosystem.
Although it is difficult to become an early Alpha hunter, and it requires "immersion" in the ecosystem and a lot of time and energy, even if we cannot become a pioneer, we cannot be willing to miss this wealth train. This article of Odaily will sort out the recent developments of the Bitcoin ecosystem to help everyone understand the hot spots and key points of the rapid ecosystem.
Traffic depression: Fractal Bitcoin mainnet will be launched on September 1st
The biggest hot spot in the Bitcoin ecosystem is Fractal Bitcoin, a Bitcoin scalability solution developed by UniSat. It is developed based on the Bitcoin core code and is fully compatible with existing Bitcoin wallets, tools, and mining equipment. In terms of performance, Fractal's block confirmation time is about 30 seconds. In terms of smart contracts, Fractal launched OP_CAT in the test network on August 13, but the cross-chain bridge implementation has not yet been finalized.
The number of active addresses on the Fractal Bitcoin test network has exceeded 8.3 million in the past 24 hours. On August 19, Fractal Bitcoin activated the BRC-20 service in the test network. Users can experience the deployment and engraving of BRC 20. At the same time, many users believe that actively participating in the test network test may result in the mainnet airdrop.
In terms of ecology, more than a dozen projects have announced that they will be built on Fractal Bitcoin. Odaily has previously screened 10 potential ecological projects. It is recommended to read " Fractal mainnet is about to be launched, and we will take stock of ten potential ecological projects ."
Babylon Bitcoin Mainnet Staking Will Be Launched on August 23
Babylon is a self-hosted Bitcoin staking protocol with a total financing amount of over US$96 million. The main investors include Paradigm, Polychain, HashKey Capital, IOSG Ventures, Amber Group, HTX Ventures, Galaxy Digital, Binance Labs, OKX Ventures, etc.
Babylon has always attracted much attention for its excellent self-custody staking technology solutions and luxurious investment lineup. Previously, the test tokens of the test network were in short supply. Recently, Babylon announced that Bitcoin mainnet staking will be launched on August 23, with an initial total staking limit of 1,000 bitcoins. The minimum staking amount for each staking transaction is 0.005 BTC and the maximum is 0.05 BTC. The competition may be fierce when it is officially opened.
At the same time, since there is no active PoS chain at present, staking will not directly give users staking rewards, but will be recorded using a points system. The liquid staking protocol PumpBTC and pSTAKE in the Babylon ecosystem are also cooperating in staking rewards activities.
RGB ecological projects become active
RGB is a general Bitcoin smart contract protocol that can issue assets in the Bitcoin network, implement smart contract functions, etc. The development time of the RGB protocol is quite long. Since 2019, many contributors and institutions have supported it, but most of them are behind-the-scenes development work, and there is not much progress in ecological construction.
However, two projects in the RGB ecosystem have recently attracted the attention of many players. One is Jerry's box, the first RGB 20 token project to conduct large-scale airdrops. On August 16, it took a snapshot of some rune, BRC 20 and Bitcoin NFT holding addresses. If you hold one of these assets, you are eligible for the airdrop. The snapshot assets are shown in the figure below.
Because RGB 20 assets require a dedicated address to receive, users need to go to the official website to associate a BiHelix format address with the whitelist address. For details, please refer to the association tutorial released by the Bitcoin Eco Wallet wizz wallet. However, in order to intercept studios and robots, the official has changed the airdrop collection rules. The whitelist address needs to transfer at least 0.0001 BTC to the BiHelix format address to be effective. For other rule changes, please refer to the tweets posted by the author on the X platform.
The other is the Meme project BlockJoker, which uses POW free mining. Users only need to click to enter the official website, link the X account, and click the upper left corner to start mining. On average, 2 to 3 tokens are produced every 5 minutes. Currently, there are more than 45,000 nodes participating in mining in the entire network. At the same time, BlockJoker's mining will continue until the launch of the RGB mainnet, so its total amount is uncertain.
Lightning Network’s first stablecoins launched
On July 23, Lightning Labs, the main developer of the Lightning Network, announced the release of Taproot Assets on the Lightning Network. Users can mint Taproot Assets on Bitcoin and transfer them through the lightning network's fast and low-cost advantages. Unlike other Bitcoin asset protocols, the Lightning Network has no intention of creating more new assets on the mainnet, but is obsessed with introducing stablecoins into the Lightning Network. Previously, the author also elaborated on the advantages of the Lightning Network in developing stablecoins in detail in " The Lightning Network is right to take the path of stablecoins ".
There are already projects that have launched stablecoins on the Lightning Network. Speed Wallet bridged USDT from Ethereum to Taproot Assets and integrated it into their Lightning Network custodial wallet. The stablecoin on Taproot Assets is marked as USDT-L. Lnfi Network (formerly Nostr Assets) announced the launch of LN Bridge, bridging Ethereum's USDT to Taproot Assets and marking it as TA-USDT.
Atomicals Virtual Machine Beta Released
Atomicals is also a smart contract protocol built on the Bitcoin mainnet. Although it was very popular in the Bitcoin ecosystem in the second half of last year, it gradually faded due to cyclical rotation and the project's relatively "halal" approach. However, the Atomicals protocol is still regarded by many Bitcoin ecosystem players as the most ideal first-layer smart contract solution.
The development of Atomicals is slow but still progressing steadily. On August 15, the official released a test version of the Atomicals virtual machine, where developers can define their own rules through smart contracts (using Bitcoin scripts) to manage the creation and transfer of their assets. Perhaps we will be able to see the performance of AVM on the mainnet in the near future.
Runes are still the main transaction type on the Bitcoin network
According to Geniidata data, Runes have remained the main transaction type on the Bitcoin network since August, with an average of more than 50% of transactions belonging to Runes, followed by regular Bitcoin transactions, while BRC-20 and Ordinals account for no more than 10% of the total transaction share, and the total number of Rune holding addresses has exceeded BRC-20.
At the same time, in terms of minting, Rune 0 UNCOMMON•GOOD is still the most popular rune asset. Currently, the number of addresses holding Rune 0 has reached 193,002, making it the rune with the most holders. The following three points roughly summarize the reasons why Bitcoin ecosystem players hold Rune 0:
Multiple addresses hold Rune 0 to win airdrops from other ecological projects, such as the Jerry's box mentioned above;
Cast more No. 0 runes when Gas is low and wait for Gas to rise before selling them for profit;
It is believed that Rune 0 will be the "sats" among runes, and has the potential to be listed on the exchange based on its strong community and number of addresses.
