Author: Golem, Odaily Odaily
Yesterday, the Fractal mainnet was officially launched.
While everyone was still discussing and calculating the profit and loss of FB token mining during the day, FLUX, known as Fractal's first token protocol, suddenly came out in the evening. Moreover, the FLUX protocol token with the same name was minted within half an hour, with a total of 21 million, and the casting cost of one (1,000) was 0.05 FB. (Odaily Note: The FB OTC price is 15 USDT, and the casting cost of a single FLUX is about 0.75 USDT)
Although the token has no index or market yet, the over-the-counter price once reached 50 USDT/piece; based on the minting cost, the increase was more than 60 times. Such high returns have also made the Bitcoin community lively again:
- "Using the airdropped FB zero-cost mint, it has turned around"
- "It's over, you've reached the next ORDI."
- "This moment is just like that moment, the familiar feeling of the inscription craze is back again."
In fact, the BRC-20 token officially supported by Fractal will not be activated until the mainnet block height reaches 21,000. The current block height is 5,490, and it will take about 5 days to reach the set height. Logically, no related tokens will appear before then. What is the origin of the FLUX token protocol, and can it reproduce the inscription craze? Odaily Odaily will briefly interpret the FLUX protocol in this article.
Introduction to FLUX Protocol
The FLUX protocol claims to be the first UTXO-based Fractal native token protocol, developed by Inscrib 3. Like BRC 20, the FLUX inscription consists of 3 simple "functions": deployment, minting, and transfer, and there are no other technologies and functions. Therefore, FLUX can be simply understood as an asset issuance protocol that replicates BRC-20 on Fractal.
Currently, the FLUX protocol has no index, trading market or official wallet. However, in order to facilitate users to deploy and mint assets, the official first created a minting website, which users can use to deploy (DEPLOY) or mint (MINT) FLUX assets.
Odaily Odaily has personally tested that no matter it is deploying or minting assets, each operation costs 0.05 FB. However, because the payment address for each operation is a new address, it is not possible to determine whether this 0.05 FB is used for the network fee of protocol asset deployment and minting or directly attributed to official income.
Overall, the minting website is relatively simple and players are in a passive situation. For example, it is impossible to view the assets currently deployed for minting and the minting progress, etc. If you do not fill in any content, directly clicking the "Unisat" button below will directly pop up the wallet payment window and cause incorrect payment; there is also a reminder at the top of the website that "experimental, no refunds", so players who participate must pay attention to the risks.
In addition to FLUX, the first token deployed by the FLUX team itself, it has also forwarded tokens named HAWK and WGBA on the X platform (the possibility of team members participating is not ruled out), and other FLUX assets are still unknown.
Serial Entrepreneur
The introduction of the FLUX protocol development team "Inscrib 3" on social media is "providing open source and non-custodial solutions for the BTC protocol." Before developing the FLUX protocol, the team had developed several Bitcoin ecosystem-related projects.
The team used to build the Pipe protocol, and developed a minting platform, indexer, exclusive wallet, trading market, and hybrid token standard PRC-404 for the Pipe protocol. However, due to the decrease in the popularity of the PIPE protocol market and the reduction in players, these infrastructures are rarely used. (Odaily Note: Pipe is a Bitcoin mainnet asset issuance protocol launched in October 2023. Its leading asset PIPE is currently 200 USDT per piece, and the historical high is around 3,000 USDT)
In addition to the Pipe protocol, the team has also started a business in the rune field and has developed a launch platform called Runescription. On this platform, users can deploy the non-fungible inscriptions generated by the Rune protocol when etching each token as NFTs. The concept of rune NFTs was also popular for a while, but as the popularity declined, the platform has not made any progress.
Inscrib 3 also co-developed the Bloki protocol in the Rune protocol. The supply of the protocol token in each block is determined by the block height and the number of runes etched in each block. At the same time, a decentralized large language model (LLM) built on the Blok protocol, Bloki AI, was recently launched to help users train a censorship-resistant dataset on the Bitcoin blockchain.
In summary, Inscrib 3 can be regarded as an out-and-out serial entrepreneur in the Bitcoin ecosystem, and it also grasps the hot spots in the ecosystem in a timely manner. From choosing to stand on the Pipe protocol in the early Bitcoin asset issuance protocol war, to choosing to build in the rune field again after the results of the protocol competition were settled, and finally coming to the current hottest Fractal ecosystem to issue assets. Although the team's previous entrepreneurial ventures did not cause much splash, this time's entrepreneurship in the Fractal ecosystem has achieved a certain degree of success in terms of popularity, but it is still unknown how long it can last.
A long drought finally ends in rain?
Searching for the keyword "FLUX" on the X platform and adding the language region restriction, you will find that although the FLUX protocol is an overseas project, various discussions in the Chinese area are relatively active, from protocol introductions, minting discussions to OTC trading groups. In comparison, there are fewer discussions in other language areas.
The FLUX protocol has attracted so much attention not only because the team has a rich history of entrepreneurship in the Bitcoin ecosystem (which is often a demerit), but also because it has met the market's demand for homogeneous tokens in the Fractal ecosystem ahead of the official plan. Therefore, even if the protocol is imperfect and only supports simple minting and deployment, driven by the narrative of "the first Fractal token protocol" and "first is first", the market is like a long-awaited rain, celebrating the early opening of the "casino".
The FLUX protocol may just be a beginning, and it may mark that the Fractal ecosystem will enter the "barbaric era" of competition in asset issuance protocols, just like the early Bitcoin network, even in the case of asset protocols that are already officially supported.
In short, the traffic and attention generated by Fractal are certainly valuable, but if the same group of people move from one "casino" to another "casino" from the Bitcoin mainnet ecosystem to the Fractal ecosystem, playing the same games without any innovation, then it will not only be boring and difficult to attract new blood to join, but the on-site PVP will not produce a large-scale wealth effect.
