Launch of ARC-20 Self-Developed Market: Overview of OKX Web3 Bitcoin Ecosystem Construction Blueprint

Author: 0xFat

Bitcoin is entering a new era.

According to Coinglass data, the total assets under management of Bitcoin ETFs have reached $56.113 billion. As of yesterday, data from companiesmarketcap shows that Bitcoin's market capitalization has risen to $1.398 trillion, surpassing silver and ranking as the eighth largest asset globally.

Previously, the total market capitalization of USDT also broke its historical high. According to CoinGecko data, the total market capitalization of USDT has surpassed $10 billion, currently reported at $10.05 billion. With the overall crypto market continuing to rise, the Bitcoin halving narrative and innovations in inscriptions are injecting momentum into the market, leading to a flourishing Bitcoin ecosystem around asset issuance standards, scaling protocols, cross-chain protocols, and more.

As an early supporter of Bitcoin ecosystem development, OKX Web3 has further advanced its construction on asset issuance standards. The official announcement recently stated support for NFT and ARC20 token trading under the Atomicals protocol, while also upgrading the Ordinals market to the inscriptions market.

This article will quickly guide readers to understand the newly upgraded inscriptions market of the OKX Web3 wallet and outline OKX's Bitcoin ecosystem construction map.

1. The original Ordinals market upgraded to the inscriptions market, helping users navigate the inscriptions ecosystem in one stop

To understand ARC20, one must first understand the Atomicals protocol.

The Atomicals protocol is built on the Bitcoin network. Through the Atomicals protocol, digital items (NFTs, such as native digital NFTs, game NFTs, digital identities, domain names, social networks, etc.) can be created (minted), transferred, and upgraded on the Bitcoin network. It also allows for the creation of fungible tokens. In other words, through the Atomicals protocol, non-fungible NFTs can be generated on the Bitcoin network, as well as fungible tokens. These fungible tokens are the ARC-20 tokens.

According to the ARC-20 protocol, each token issued requires a corresponding amount of sats' UTXO as support, meaning each token is bound to 1 sat, ensuring that the value of each token will not fall below 1 sat. Additionally, when minting tokens, the ARC-20 standard employs a mechanism similar to Bitcoin's proof-of-work, requiring computational power to calculate a prefix, which serves as a necessary condition for minting the token. In the future, ARC-20 and Atomicals will bring new opportunities for Bitcoin in asset management and issuance.

The OKX Web3 team previously announced the integration of an innovative multi-standard inscriptions protocol. The self-developed ARC-20 market has now been integrated into the inscriptions market, alongside the Ordinals market, supporting users in viewing and transferring related assets on the display page, as well as the functions of placing and taking orders for related assets, which users can easily access through the app.

As of now, the OKX Web3 inscriptions ecosystem has integrated BRC-20, SRC-20, ARC-20, Rune Alpha, and other inscriptions protocols. The inscriptions market now supports trading of BRC-20, ARC-20 tokens, and NFTs. Users can explore and engage with popular inscriptions ecosystems like Bitcoin in one stop using the OKX Web3 wallet. Relevant personnel stated that in the future, they will focus on market trends and user needs to improve the construction of the inscriptions ecosystem.

2. Systematically understanding the progress of OKX Web3's Bitcoin ecosystem construction

The development of the Bitcoin ecosystem has always been affected by network scalability issues. If developers want to build applications on it, better scaling solutions are needed. As a result, innovative applications within the ecosystem have been relatively rare. However, since last year, the emergence of the Ordinals protocol and the BRC-20 token standard has sparked a wave of inscriptions, redirecting attention to asset issuance protocols on Bitcoin, leading to the emergence of diverse asset issuance protocols such as Atomicals, Runes, BTC Stamps, Taproot Assets, and others, as well as ARC-20, SRC-20, ORC-20, etc.

Essentially, the inscriptions track has introduced a new model of Fair launch to the market, bringing significant attention to the Bitcoin ecosystem and rekindling interest in it.

Due to the scalability and transaction confirmation time challenges of Bitcoin, for the ecosystem to develop sustainably, scaling is a pressing issue that all developers in the Bitcoin ecosystem must face. Currently, there are two main development routes for enhancing Bitcoin's scalability: one is on-chain scaling, optimizing on Bitcoin Layer 1; the other is off-chain scaling, commonly understood as Layer 2. In addition to asset issuance protocols and scaling solutions, an increasing number of projects are emerging in the infrastructure sector, such as wallets supporting inscriptions, decentralized indexers, cross-chain bridges, launchpads, etc., all flourishing in development.

On the basis of asset issuance protocols and application layer infrastructure construction, the OKX Web3 team has been continuously making efforts, having been the first to support the Ordinals market and achieving remarkable results.

As early as July last year, the OKX Web3 Ordinals market became the largest marketplace for BRC20 token trading. Now, with the continuous development of the Bitcoin ecosystem, the OKX Web3 team is actively contributing to the construction of the Bitcoin ecosystem from various aspects, including wallet tools, browsers, trading markets, protocol standards, cross-chain bridges, and Bitcoin Layer 2, among others. On one hand, OKX DEX has supported cross-chain trading of Bitcoin early on, and on the Layer 2 scaling solutions, OKX Web3 is gradually supporting the integration of related projects such as Babylon, Merlin, B², etc.

Of course, as an investment fund under OKX, OKX Ventures is committed to funding innovative developments in the Bitcoin ecosystem. It has already invested in projects like B² Network, Bitmap Tech, Babylon, bitSmiley, alexGo, Portal Defi, and others. According to previous reports, OKX Ventures will allocate $10 million to continuously invest in and support emerging entrepreneurs in the BTC ecosystem, accelerating advancements in blockchain technology while providing services and resources to help partners grow together.

In fact, in addition to leading the infrastructure construction of the Bitcoin ecosystem, the OKX Web3 wallet has also devoted time and effort to the development of the Ethereum EVM ecosystem and other hot ecosystems like Solana over the past one to two years. While improving infrastructure, it has also integrated popular applications within the ecosystem, consistently working to create a convenient one-stop Web3 entry for users. As OKX's Chief Innovation Officer Jason Lau stated when supporting the construction of the Bitcoin ecosystem, "User demand is the first principle that OKX refers to when making value judgments, and user demand is also the primary driving force behind OKX's commitment to product innovation."