Transactions Using Bitcoin Hit An All-Time High, While a New Token Type Gained Traction

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Developers are continuing to test the boundaries of what may be done through experimentation on the Bitcoin blockchain.

Transactions Using Bitcoin Hit An All-Time High, While a New Token Type Gained Traction_

The most recent significant advancement is the introduction of BRC-20 tokens, which are fungible assets named after ERC-20 tokens. ERC-20 tokens are a token standard that was developed on the Ethereum blockchain and is now utilized by the majority of tokens that are created on that chain.

 

As of May 4th, the total market capitalization of these tokens was $125 million, which is a very small percentage of the total market capitalization of Bitcoin. In spite of this, on the first of the month, they caused the number of daily transactions on the Bitcoin blockchain to reach a new all-time high of 682,000. Bitcoin transaction costs have also risen to levels not seen since July 2021, when they were at an all-time high.

The move is important in many ways. Bitcoin has traditionally been regarded as a network that is stable. Its strength was that it did not alter since it had a hard cap of 21 million tokens and was backed by a decentralized group of miners. The introduction of ordinals and, more recently, BRC-20s signals a shift toward increased experimentation within the Bitcoin community.

Transactions Using Bitcoin Hit An All-Time High, While a New Token Type Gain ed Traction_

The BRC-20 standard was made public for the first time on March 8 by a developer who goes by the alias Domo. For the deployment, they employed a protocol called Ordinals, which offers a method of “inscribing” smaller units of Bitcoin called Satoshis with specific data. These satoshis may then be used to pay for specific transactions. The data could be anything digital, from pictures and audio to text and video and even moving pictures.

In the instance of BRC-20s, users are encoding vital information, such as the supply of a token, in a format that is well-known and referred to as JSON. Because of this, the tokens can, in principle, be exchanged for one another.

 

People don’t have a lot of options for what they can do with BRC-20s at the moment. The documentation that was made public by the person who created the token type includes a list of three functions: individuals have the ability to produce a token, mint a token that has already been created, and send the token.

These tokens might become more valuable once there are applications designed specifically for them. However, even the native minting of tokens on Bitcoin is a significant development in the capabilities of the blockchain, which previously did not make it possible for users to readily issue their own currency.

Ordinals have caused quite a stir in the Bitcoin world ever since their introduction back in January. The technique takes advantage of a data field that was presented by an upgrade to Bitcoin known as Segwit, as well as capabilities are shown by an additional upgrade known as Taproot, which became operational in 2021.

Since then, more than one million Ordinals have been inscribed by users, and other marketplaces similar to OpenSea have sprung up to encourage trading.

 

While Ordinals were responsible for the creation of BRC-20s, other projects are carrying on with the process of building on Bitcoin parts of the infrastructure that have contributed significantly to Ethereum’s success. For instance, Trustless Computer markets itself as a Layer 1 based on Bitcoin. This would make it possible for developers to run fully-fledged apps similar to those used by the major DeFi protocols, in addition to fungible and non-fungible tokens.

According to punk3700, a pseudonymous core contributor to Trustless Computer, the company supports its own type of fungible tokens, which are dubbed SBRC-20s. This information was shared. The smart contracts offered by Trustless Computer are only able to interact with SBRC-20s and not with BRC-20s. The primary contributor did mention that they are looking into the possibility of developing a means to connect BRC-20s to the smart contract solution, but they are not yet doing so.

On April 30, the Trustless Computer team deployed a fork of the second iteration of Uniswap, which is DeFi’s largest decentralized exchange in terms of volume. This is part of their effort to demonstrate that it is viable to create apps natively on Bitcoin. The Solidity programming language is the most popular choice for developers working on Ethereum, and Trustless Computer makes it possible for them to use this language.

punk3077 wrote, “I feel ten times better compared to my first Ethereum contract deployment in 2017,” and the year was 2017.

The smart contract solutions also employ the data field that was first introduced by Segwit in 2017, which was adopted in the same year. Trustless Computer does not use the Ordinals protocol, although it did draw inspiration from it.

 

punk3077 stated, “I believe Ordinals invented an entirely new way of building on Bitcoin,” which is an accurate statement. ” It presents those of us working on Bitcoin with a completely fresh viewpoint on the cryptocurrency. For the first time, we are able to realize that Bitcoin is more than just a currency.

When it comes to a wallet solution, Trustless Computer is looking at the infrastructure that Ethereum was originally built on. In February, Punk3077 released a wallet that is built on MetaMask, which is the wallet that is typically utilized with chains that are compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM). When utilizing solutions provided by Trustless Computers, users have the option to use MetaMask.

 

Despite its name, Trustless Computer is not inherently untrustworthy. Nodes that are unique to Trustless Computer handle transactions from the Bitcoin blockchain on behalf of the smart contract ecosystem. It is unclear how many nodes are responsible for processing transactions on Trustless Computer, which introduces a centralized, and therefore susceptible to manipulation, element into the system.

Punk3077 isn’t the only person who is enthusiastic about the opportunities that come with building on top of Bitcoin. According to Leonidas, the founder of Ord.io, a blockchain explorer for Ordinals, BRC-20s demonstrate that a new mentality is developing in relation to blockchain technology.

“Ordinals culture brings back the recipe for innovation by encouraging developers to try crazy experiments without fear of failure,” the creator stated. “Ordinal culture brings back the recipe for innovation.”

Leonidas noted that Vitalik Buterin, the co-founder of Ethereum, understood the value of developers to a cryptocurrency network, and as a result, he worked to build an environment that was hospitable to developers.

The company’s creator recently stated that there are currently hundreds of extremely bright engineers working full-time on Web3 use cases built on top of Bitcoin.

Undoubtedly, new trends appear and disappear frequently in the cryptocurrency industry. Because those who are first to use new technology are likely to exaggerate its relevance in order to make a profit, there is no assurance that the frenzy surrounding BRC-20s and smart contracts on Bitcoin will continue for an extended period of time.

The Bitcoin protocol changes that enable the creation of BRC-20s and SBRC-20s, however, set them apart from one another. These modifications were made feasible via an upgrade known as Taproot. As a consequence of this, the Ordinals protocol, as well as Trustless Computer, are partly naturally integrated into the Bitcoin blockchain. This is in contrast to the numerous initiatives that have been made to use the network by building on top of it, which frequently results in the introduction of security flaws.

 

The new activity on the blockchain with the highest market value is just beginning to show its impacts, but they are already starting to become apparent. Since more people are utilizing the blockchain for purposes other than just transmitting Bitcoin, the median value of a Bitcoin transaction has decreased. This is due to the fact that more people are using the network.

Leonidas is excited about the impending dawn of a new age for Bitcoin. In terms of infrastructure and user experience, the fact of the matter is that Bitcoin has significantly lagged behind Ethereum and other Web3 blockchains over the course of the past five years.

Bitcoin has also experienced increased interest as large US banks have collapsed this year, which has caused some investors to divert funds toward the digital asset as a hedge against potential losses. Because of this, as well as the development of native smart contracts, BRC-20s, and ordinals, the blockchain technology behind Bitcoin is surely attracting the attention of a wider public than it has in recent years.

Punk3700, for one, is striving to make the most of this opportunity. They remarked that “this is the best time to build on bitcoin,” and I agree with them.

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