SATS price doubles in 10 days, how far can UniSat's support go?

Author: Golem, Odaily Planet Daily

The BRC-20 token SATS has recently performed exceptionally well. Since the bottom on August 5, its price has doubled within 10 days; on August 12, it surged over 24% in a single day, with a market capitalization surpassing the original BRC-20 sector leader ORDI, entering the top 100 of the cryptocurrency market.

The community largely interprets this surge as an early realization of the positive news regarding the upcoming mainnet launch of Fractal Bitcoin in September, which is developed by the Bitcoin ecosystem wallet UniSat. In fact, this is not the first time UniSat has empowered SATS, but the previous efforts did not yield good results.

Due to its massive supply and large number of holders, SATS was once regarded as the largest Meme in the Bitcoin ecosystem. Why is UniSat so persistent in empowering SATS, and will this time be successful? Odaily Planet Daily will explore these questions in this article.

First Empowerment Attempt: BRC-20 Swap Charges SATS as Fees

No matter how many times the story of SATS is repeated, it can still be called a legend in the Bitcoin ecosystem.

It is the first massive Meme token minted in the Bitcoin ecosystem, with a total supply of 21 trillion, taking six months to complete, and at the time of minting, the number of holding addresses reached 36,000. Unlike other BRC-20 tokens minted during the later inscription craze, most of SATS's minting was completed during the low period of the Bitcoin ecosystem, which means it stands behind a group of loyal Bitcoin ecosystem users.

Such a large-scale and highly loyal community did not go unnoticed by UniSat, which was already the most widely used wallet in the Bitcoin ecosystem at that time. Shortly after SATS was fully minted, UniSat announced that it would empower SATS on the BRC-20 swap to be launched on the mainnet. Specifically, SATS will be charged as a fee in the BRC-20 swap on the mainnet, with a 0.3% service fee charged to all users participating in the transaction, of which 1/6 (0.05%) will be collected by UniSat, and the remaining 5/6 (0.25%) will be distributed to all liquidity providers of the trading pairs.

However, SATS's first empowerment ultimately ended in failure. The BRC-20 swap module developed by UniSat went live on the Bitcoin mainnet in November 2023, but due to its operation using an "on-demand trading" model that was not completely decentralized and permissionless, as well as disagreements with other developers on the construction of the BRC-20 ecosystem, UniSat suspended the BRC-20 swap service in April 2024 and returned all SATS collected as fees to users in the form of airdrops before the suspension of services.

Second Empowerment: Open Indexer with SATS as Incentives

In addition to charging fees, UniSat explored other ways to empower SATS. In December 2023, UniSat announced that it would open its own indexer for mining operations in January 2024, using SATS as incentives.

This was UniSat's second attempt to empower SATS, but it ultimately also ended in failure. At that time, the BRC-20 indexers in the market were not unified, with several "big players" running their own indexers, and UniSat became a target for criticism. Runestone founder Leonidas had previously requested UniSat to open its indexer on the X platform, and later questioned whether UniSat's delay in open-sourcing the indexer was to establish competitive barriers here.

Due to various factors, UniSat ultimately abandoned the plan to create an independent indexer, and the second empowerment plan using SATS as mining rewards for the indexer also collapsed.

Third Empowerment Plan: Fractal Empowers SATS, Continuation of Mainnet Will

Although the first two empowerment attempts failed, UniSat did not "give up easily" and announced a third empowerment plan for SATS in July this year.

Specifically, UniSat announced that it would use SATS as rewards in the Fractal Swap on its developed Bitcoin scalability solution Fractal Bitcoin; Fractal Swap employs a competitive Rollup mechanism, allowing users to earn SATS rewards by packaging their Rollup results into the sequencer. At a time when the BRC-20 ecosystem was in a downturn, UniSat's empowerment of SATS received enthusiastic responses from the community and the market, with SATS rising over 30% on that day.

In fact, UniSat's empowerment of SATS on Fractal Bitcoin is not without precedent.

Earlier this year, UniSat had revealed its plan to use SATS as Rollup mechanism rewards on the X platform here. Additionally, in the official announcement of the closure of the mainnet BRC-20 swap, UniSat indicated that future airdrops on the Fractal Bitcoin mainnet would prioritize users who had previously interacted with the mainnet BRC-20 swap and deposited assets.

If UniSat's previous closure of the mainnet BRC-20 swap was a reluctant move due to various limitations, then the swap on Fractal Bitcoin is a continuation of the will of the mainnet BRC-20 swap, consistently empowering SATS throughout.

Will This Empowerment Succeed?

Why is UniSat so persistent in empowering SATS rather than other BRC-20 tokens?

Some believe that UniSat is one of the major stakeholders of SATS, controlling a large amount of chips, and this move is driven by self-interest. Others argue that UniSat simply recognized the trend early and chose to ride the wave, similar to how various entities come in to drive and empower when Meme coins like DOGE and SHIB reach a certain height.

Will this empowerment of SATS by Fractal Bitcoin succeed? Currently, there is no definitive answer, as the previous two empowerment plans failed due to challenges in the business operations themselves, and Fractal Bitcoin seems to be facing similar issues. For example, what cross-chain solution should be adopted between the Bitcoin mainnet and Fractal Bitcoin to achieve goals of security and efficiency, and whether running OP_CAT can truly enhance the programmability of Fractal Bitcoin, etc. The path forward for Fractal Bitcoin is shrouded in a layer of mist.

As for SATS itself, since its minting was completed, it has been listed on mainstream exchanges and has gone through several cycles of ups and downs in the Bitcoin ecosystem. From on-chain data, the number of holding addresses for SATS continues to grow, currently reaching 49,019, still greater than the number of holding addresses at the time of minting completion.

Therefore, regardless of whether UniSat succeeds or not, whether SATS ultimately exists as a Meme coin or a utility token may not be the most important thing. As long as its influence and topicality remain, even if one UniSat fails, there will still be a thousand "UniSats" rising again.