Latest Developments in the Bitcoin Ecosystem

Recently, two dynamics in the Bitcoin ecosystem have attracted considerable attention, believed to have the potential to boost the recent sluggish inscription market.

One is a new proposal for the BRC-20 protocol; the other is that Casey, the founder of Rune (also BRC-20), stated that the market cap of Rune is expected to reach 1 billion within a month.

In this new proposal for the BRC-20 protocol, it allows deployers to enjoy the rights of token minting, meaning they can set their own interests; additionally, it increases support for 5-character named tokens.

For a long time, whenever we mention BRC-20 tokens, we always think of the protocol's fairness and no pre-mining— even the token deployers do not have privileges, and to obtain tokens, they must mine on-chain just like all other participants. This characteristic has played an indispensable role in establishing the current status of BRC-20 tokens.

However, this characteristic has also been criticized by some project teams, so the change in the new proposal reconsiders the interests of project teams.

This change will definitely spark some controversy, but I believe it has no impact on project parties that genuinely wish to conduct fair sales; it merely provides an additional option for the entire ecosystem, which may not be a bad thing.

As for the protocol's increased support for 5-character named tokens, many people immediately think of which names among the 5-character tokens might be worth speculating on, preparing to participate in related speculation.

With the development of the BRC-20 ecosystem to this point, the stage where strong consensus can be built solely on naming concepts has passed, so increasing support for 5-character tokens is unlikely to produce another token with consensus as strong as ORDI.

Therefore, in my view, this update to the BRC-20 protocol is not particularly innovative; at most, it will create a small ripple before returning to calm.

Recently, the Rune ecosystem has left a deep impression on me with its continuous airdrops, making it hard to keep up.

Every now and then when I open my wallet, I see a series of inexplicable new items, then I go to Magiceden to see what they are, only to find that they are all related to Rune.

From these airdrops alone, these project teams have spent a considerable amount of money on transaction fees. These project teams are genuinely empowering Rune with real money, actively operating the Rune ecosystem.

I remember during a Twitter discussion in March, many listeners asked me which protocols in the Bitcoin ecosystem I was optimistic about.

My response at that time was that as the ecosystem has developed to this stage, it can no longer be judged solely on technology to see which protocol has more potential; what is more important is to look at ecosystem operations and see which protocol can quickly build the ecosystem. Once the market and trends are dominated by a certain protocol, other protocols, no matter how advanced they are technologically, become irrelevant as time passes.

At that time, I felt that apart from BRC-20, the performance of other protocols in the ecosystem was quite similar. But looking back now, I believe the development of the Rune ecosystem has clearly accelerated significantly, at least in terms of atmosphere and momentum, surpassing many competitors.

However, some protocol communities seem to be unaware of this, still emphasizing their technological advancements without taking substantial actions to quickly translate their technological advantages into ecological benefits.

As for the bold statement made by the founder of Rune about achieving a certain market cap, even accompanied by an image of seppuku on Twitter, it is indeed a bit exaggerated.

Such remarks from the founder, especially those specifically targeting market cap, will certainly have potential negative impacts on the development of the ecosystem.

I have never seen Satoshi's historical remarks about how large he wants Bitcoin's market cap to be, nor have I seen Vitalik explicitly stating how large he wants Ethereum's market cap to be.

As for the recent sluggishness of the inscription ecosystem, I am not worried at all. When the market truly enters a bull market, sector rotation will definitely come.

We do not need to care about the present, nor do we need to monitor daily whether there will be any news to stimulate the market.