The higher point has dropped nearly 50%. Can the "Golden Shovel" Turtsat withstand the test?

Author: joyce

The Bitcoin ecosystem remains a hot sector that can attract market attention, but some projects are already facing challenges. On December 16, the AMM NFT trading platform BakerySwap conducted its first Launchpad, with the IDO project being the Bitcoin chain game Bitcoin Cats. Subsequently, the BakerySwap token BAKE surged over 100% in the following three days. On December 24, BakerySwap announced that the new Launchpad would feature the metaverse project BitLand (BLLB), based on the Bitcoin ecosystem, which once again drove BAKE up by over 50%.

In the past week, the IDO of two Bitcoin ecosystem projects brought BakerySwap a threefold increase in BAKE prices. On the other hand, the Turtsat token TURT, which announced two IDOs in a week and is positioned as a platform focused on Bitcoin ecosystem IDOs, saw its price drop nearly 50% after briefly breaking through $0.1.

Turtsat is a community-led open platform for Ordinals, with three core business modules: donation agreements, indexing services, and an open-source tool platform for Ordinals. The donation agreement serves as IDO services, allowing Turtsat to apply for initial funding assistance for projects and enhance their influence. Users support open-source Ordinals projects worldwide by selecting, voting, and donating, and they receive returns by participating in the early development of projects.

Its token TURT (BRC-20) had previously surged over 350% at the beginning of this month. On December 8, after TURT was listed on the trading platform MEXC, it continued to maintain its upward momentum, rising from about $0.02 to $0.1. The recent significant price drop has drawn the community's attention. While some voices suggest that the price drop is just normal fluctuation and "washing," Turtsat, which is also a "shovel," has seen its market value shrink while other platforms are thriving, indicating that there are more reasons worth analyzing behind it.

IDO Projects with "Black History"

On December 21, Turtsat announced its new IDO project Copycat Dex, describing it as an innovative P2P derivative protocol based on PVPAMM, supporting the BRC20 ecosystem and Bitcat DEX, backed by Copycat Finance supported by Binance Labs.

However, 12 hours later, Turtsat announced on social media that the release of the Copycat Dex token $BICA would be postponed.

It is reported that Copycat Finance is a project launched on the BNB chain in 2021, which faced community skepticism regarding its ability to deliver products. Community member Anand Chennai2London published a lengthy tweet after Turtsat announced the suspension of the Copycat IDO, recounting the "story" of Copycat Dex in 2021.

Copycat Finance is a platform that implements copy trading on decentralized platforms, with the token $COPYCAT priced at $0.17 during its IDO. However, after its launch, Copycat Finance showed no significant progress for two months, with $COPYCAT plummeting to $0.02, until it was selected as a Binance Labs incubation project in November 2021, causing its price to surge tenfold in one day and later breaking through $0.46 within the following week.

However, in the subsequent two months, Copycat Finance still failed to deliver products, and the price of $COPYCAT shrank by 80%. Eventually, Copycat Finance launched its "non-functional" product. In March 2022, Copycat Finance was hacked, losing millions of $COPYCAT. The project team stated that if the token price fell below $0.01, they would buy back all tokens, but not in a one-time buyback manner; if the token remained above $0.01, they would "lightly buy back" tokens monthly or bi-monthly starting from that month.

According to community member Anand Chennai2London, "nothing happened after that." $COPYCAT fell below $0.01 in May 2022, and as of the time of writing, its price is $0.006.

Regarding the historical issues of Copycat Finance, Turtsat's response has been timely and effective, with the community viewing this pause in the IDO as a reflection of Turtsat's "responsibility."

IDO Projects in Queue, but Lacking Empowerment

However, the emergence of Copycat Finance may not be a coincidence, as Turtsat's recent IDO results indeed face skepticism regarding "PPT projects." After MultBit, Turtsat has continuously launched new projects at a surprising speed. On December 15, Turtsat announced on social media that it had received 28 IDO applications, which would be released sequentially.

In addition to Turtsat, other platforms that have conducted IDOs for Bitcoin ecosystem projects include the decentralized auction platform Bounce Finance and NFT AMM BakerySwap. Currently, the number of Bitcoin ecosystem projects IDO'd on Turtsat exceeds the combined number of projects on Bounce Finance and BakerySwap.

As of the time of writing, the Bitcoin ecosystem projects involved in IDOs on Bounce Finance include: cross-chain bridge protocol MultiBit (MUBI), DeFi protocol BitStable (BSSB), and cross-chain trading protocol Bitswap.

The Bitcoin ecosystem projects involved in IDOs on BakerySwap include: the chain game Bitcoin Cats and the metaverse project BitLand (BLLB).

The Bitcoin ecosystem projects involved in IDOs on Turtsat include: Ordinals asset liquidity developer Chamcha (CHAX), cross-chain bridge protocol MultiBit (MUBI), Ordinals aggregation market NxHub (NHUB), cross-chain LSD protocol Dova (DOVA), chain game platform Rabbitgames (RAIT), Ordinals NFT issuance platform SVARGA (SVGA), yield aggregator Zoopia (ZOOA), and the halted P2P derivative protocol Copycat Dex (BCIA).

In addition to these projects, the multi-chain meme project MultiChain FOOX based on the BRC20 standard and BakerySwap's debut project Bitcoin Cats have also been released in a "Christmas special" version on Turtsat.

The number of projects can represent, to some extent, the resources and community influence that Turtsat possesses, but this is only one aspect. In terms of empowering projects, Turtsat has not made effective explorations compared to its "competitors." Bounce Brand launched BounceBit on December 1, aiming to provide DeFi solutions designed for the Bitcoin ecosystem, while MultiBit will be the exclusive official bridge for BounceBit. In the release of BakerySwap's new Launchpad project BitLand (BLLB), users can participate using BAKE and the previously released Bitcoin Cats token 1CAT.

Both Bounce and BakerySwap have more or less bound the projects they IDO'd to their own ecosystems, allowing users holding early project tokens to participate in new project releases. In Turtsat's project releases, the whitelist is divided into Alpha and Beta categories, with Beta whitelists coming from the new project's community, while Alpha whitelists include KOLs and users holding a certain number of "EGGS." On the TurtSat official website, users stake TURT to earn EGGS, which can then be exchanged for Hatching WL to gain whitelist eligibility.

In Turtsat's initial roadmap, it was supposed to provide indexing services and an open-source tool platform for Bitcoin ecosystem projects, but these services have not yet been launched. In the eyes of the community, they can only hold hope for Turtsat's IDO projects to "take off," with investors holding TURT exchanging the EGGS earned through staking for whitelist eligibility for Turtsat's next project, looking forward to the next MUBI.

Revitalizing Turtsat?

Turtsat is also continuously paying attention to community opinions. On December 11, Turtsat publicly solicited suggestions for platform ecosystem optimization from the community, focusing on fairness, efficiency, and practicality, and offered whitelist rewards for the IDO project Svarga Launch. Within three days, Turtsat received 126 improvement suggestions.

Additionally, Turtsat has been expanding its network of partnerships. Over the past week, Turtsat has successively established partnerships with market maker DWF Labs and Web3 community platform Glaxe.

The collaboration with DWF is a "surprise" for the community, but TURT holders are more concerned about the potential of Turtsat's future IDO projects. On December 28, the first smart rune creation platform in the Bitcoin ecosystem, QuillIQ (QUIQ), will conduct its IDO release on Turtsat. QuillIQ is an all-in-one aggregation tool platform that supports Ordinals and the Lightning Network, helping users with smart rune forging, automated on-chain data analysis reports, blue-chip rune alerts, and robot automated trading.

In addition to QuillIQ, the recently launched Bitcoin Layer 2 solution Dovi has also announced a partnership with Turtsat. Dovi launched its staking system on December 25, achieving a TVL of $1.6 million within 10 hours. According to the team, Dovi has received investment from Kucoin and has stable partnerships with OKX and Coinmarketcap.

Amid the excitement, Turtsat is still a platform that has grown for less than a year. It is foreseeable that Turtsat will continue to bring more Bitcoin ecosystem projects to the community, but what kind of development path Turtsat can take remains to be seen over time.