Exclusive interview with OYL founder Alec Taggart: What makes the Bitcoin wallet of the Inscription series, launched in collaboration with Hayes, stand out?

Author: Weilin, PANews

In early August, BitMEX co-founder Arthur Hayes announced the launch of its first NFT series on Ordinals, called Airhead. This series was created in collaboration with the OYL wallet, which is an investment project of the Hayes family office, Maelstrom.

Hayes wrote in his blog: "Each Airhead is an inflatable balloon-like character, generated using recursive art, intuitively showcasing the scale and value of the user's digital portfolio at the time of minting. A total of 10,000 Airheads are available, and these characters reflect the asset weight on the leaderboard through sequential rankings and tier differences, providing a fun and competitive way to display wealth."

Earlier this year, OYL raised $3 million in a Pre-Seed round, led by venture capital firm Arca, with participation from Arthur Hayes, Web3.com Ventures, and BRC-20 creator Domo. OYL's core products are the OYL wallet and the meta-protocol Protorunes, which adds programmability to Runes. In addition to the collaboratively launched inscriptions, OYL's CEO and co-founder Alec Taggart also introduced two core features of the OYL wallet: aggregator and trading behavior visualization.

Recently, PANews interviewed OYL's CEO and co-founder Alec Taggart to discuss the story behind the creation of the OYL wallet and Airhead. Below is the edited transcript of the interview.

PANews: As a founder, what prompted you to embark on your journey in crypto? What projects have you led? How have these experiences influenced the founding of OYL?

Alec Taggart: My career began in management consulting for financial services companies, such as banks, asset management firms, and payment institutions. During that time, at the end of 2016, I joined the company's blockchain innovation department, where we consulted for large corporations and banks on how to use and think about this technology, and also developed strategies for some early-stage companies. It was evident that many entrepreneurs in both traditional finance and the cryptocurrency space were building fintech applications based on permissionless blockchain infrastructure. However, they were constrained by banking infrastructure, regulatory environments, and compliance issues.

Later, I left and joined a DAO created by the Bybit exchange, BitDao, where I was involved in numerous partnerships, incubation projects, and trades, working on various projects in the DeFi and Web3 space, primarily within the Ethereum ecosystem. BitDao later evolved into the Mantle L2 ecosystem fund. Around early 2023, when Ordinals truly emerged, I hadn't paid much attention to Bitcoin before, as its programming capabilities and tools for different assets had stagnated. Much of the infrastructure and applications were built in other ecosystems like Ethereum. But when I saw Ordinals happening, it was a turning point; now there were Bitcoin-native assets being issued directly on Bitcoin, so we began to reassess the vast amount of infrastructure built on Ethereum. We founded OYL with the aim of rebuilding this infrastructure for Bitcoin, suitable for new assets and asset classes, while adapting to Bitcoin's unique architecture and frameworks like Ordinals, BRC-20, Runes, and the UTXO model.

PANews: OYL was established in August 2023. What prompted you to create OYL? What is the size of the OYL team? Are there any stories worth sharing from the team-building process?

Alec Taggart: The OYL team is probably the most interesting part. Every important startup has a very strong team that builds the project together and navigates challenges. Our team has been on this journey for about 8 years. Our CTO Ray Pulver was previously the CTO at Framework Ventures, where he and I developed insurance products together. Another co-founder, Cole Jorissen, has worked at Dharma and OpenSea, and he was the head of design branding and product design at Windranger, where he worked for me.

So, when Ordinals happened in early 2022, I flew to New York to meet Cole and said, "Hey, this is going to be very important. We need to drop everything and go all in." We brainstormed a series of ideas together. Cole and I have incubated and helped over 20 crypto companies, assisting them in thinking through their plans and products from 0 to 1.

We considered many different ideas. When things became clearer, I contacted Ray and told him what we were doing. He was very interested and said, "This is fascinating." I was actually at ETH Denver, attending the first Ordinals meetup in February, which had about 20 attendees. At that time, I was greeting many of my friends, saying I was now a Bitcoin Maxi, and they asked me what I was doing. When I flew back to New York, I contacted Ray again. He agreed to join us and brought in three developers to work with us. This was our early team iteration.

One of the best developers I had worked with at a fintech company also reached out to me that same week, saying, "Hey, I'm bored at work. Do you have anything I can join?" So he joined us as well. Thus, the initial core team consisted of many people I had collaborated with in different companies.

Fast forward to now, we are building two main products. Our core product is an infrastructure business called Sandshrew. Sandshrew is a Bitcoin RPC product, similar to Alchemy on Ethereum, providing all the useful Bitcoin data you need to build any application, including Rune, BRC-20, Ordinals, etc. We also have an indexing product called Metashrew. Metashrew allows you to build custom meta-protocols and indexes to transform token states. Based on these, we developed two products: one is the consumer-facing OYL wallet. We are also developing a meta-protocol called Protorunes on our infrastructure. Protorunes is a meta-protocol that allows Runes assets to be burned into a programmable meta-protocol or sub-protocol, giving it programmability directly on the first layer, combined with the Runes asset class. So, on the backend of these products, we have 4 developers responsible for the data indexing part and another 4 developers for the wallet part.

PANews: The OYL Wallet aims to connect inscriptions, Runes, and the Bitcoin ecosystem to achieve asset conversion. What is its core technology? What is its market positioning and target?

Alec Taggart: The OYL wallet can actually be seen as an expression of our foundational tool-building capabilities. Our goal is to provide the best data and the best tools for exploring the discoverability of the Bitcoin system in the simplest way possible.

One of the features we are most excited about is the aggregator we launched. Through this aggregator, users can directly purchase Runes and BRC-20 across multiple markets within the wallet. We aggregate partially signed Bitcoin transactions from multiple markets and bundle these transactions together with the aggregator, abstracting all transactions, signatures, and inscription transactions, clearly displaying the fees for performing these operations. You can purchase assets from different markets with a single click. This is a very advanced, non-custodial, trustless product that allows you to buy these assets directly on Bitcoin. This is one aspect that excites us a lot. As more swap products emerge for BRC-20, Runes, and other assets, we will integrate them into the aggregator. Additionally, we have excellent trading fee and trading simulation features.

One issue with Bitcoin is that many activities people are doing, such as trading, swapping, and sending, do not have a block explorer like Etherscan that can actually show what you are doing. Most of the time, it only displays Bitcoin transactions and UTXO splits. But because we have excellent trading simulation and backend indexing, we can consolidate these transactions and show users their actual operations. When users receive this Ordinals, they can see the previous asset exchange situation. This provides a very clear visualization of user asset ownership and asset interaction. So these are our two most important aspects.

Thirdly, we are launching an Ordinals series called Airhead in collaboration with Arthur Hayes. The entire whitelist and minting experience are integrated into the wallet. You download the wallet and enter the whitelist. Based on the assets held in the wallet address (BRC-20s, Runes, Ordinals, Bitcoin), there will be a leaderboard. The top 10,000 users on the leaderboard will receive whitelist spots. During minting, this series consists of 10,000 balloon characters with 10 inflation states. The highest-ranking users will receive the fattest balloon character. Therefore, during minting, they will have a very inflated balloon character or a skinny balloon character. This utilizes the dynamic characteristics of Bitcoin, such as recursion, to integrate all these layers together. This is very interesting because it is a product in itself. For us, it is about how to build this experience in the wallet, making the world's hardest-to-trade assets easy, and providing a truly trustworthy and enjoyable experience in one place.

PANews: What was the original intention behind the establishment of the Airhead inscription project? What is the most interesting aspect of this project?

Alec Taggart: Arthur Hayes was initially one of our investors, and his fund Maelstrom was actually one of our first investors a year ago. One thing he wanted to do was create an Ordinals series. He had never participated in an NFT project before, but now there was this possibility on Bitcoin. He wanted to do something unique on Bitcoin, as crazy and unique as his personality. This is the first project. Over the past year, we have worked with him to create a series that truly reflects his personality, which is new and different. The artwork has real rigor and looks almost like Jeff Koons' work. If you are familiar with it, Jeff Koons' balloon animal sculptures look almost like glass.

Another motivation is that as a wallet, there are other wallets on the market. How do we differentiate ourselves? When we launched this wallet, how do we make this experience engaging, showcase our features, and turn it into a fun game for people to compete for whitelist spots? They will transfer assets over, actually see the wallet's functionality, and observe what happens when they transfer assets, truly experiencing all the powerful features of OYL.

PANews: Are there any early stories you can share about Arthur Hayes and your collaboration? How has Hayes' involvement impacted OYL?

Alec Taggart: When Ordinals first emerged, Arthur instructed his team to look for a very good investment opportunity. This was a year ago, very early on. We were their only and initial Ordinals investment. He was very interested in the user experience perspective, which aligned with our views in other ecosystems. He calls himself an evolved Bitcoin maximalist, which resonates very well with our personality.

His assistance has been significant because he has an excellent macro perspective on the entire industry. He founded BitMEX, which is a successful enterprise, and he is also an important business leader. Therefore, he provided tremendous help as we considered entering the market. Especially now that we are developing this Ordinals series, he ensures that our goals align with the wallet's objectives, which are new and also meet consumer design needs. So from this perspective, he has provided us with very good advice, helping us think more clearly about the issues.

PANews: Recently, OYL proposed the editable Runes, Protorunes. What innovations does Protorunes bring? Can you introduce the concept and goals of Protorunes?

Alec Taggart: First of all, Protorunes is made possible by the indexing product we built, Metashrew. Metashrew is an open-source framework that allows for the construction of fully transparent, open-source meta-protocols and indexes, and it is architected onto a WASM virtual machine. Additionally, in our backend product Sandshrew, we have built a very excellent closed-source orchestration layer that can be hosted, so anyone building indexes, meta-protocols, or specific data sources using this framework can transmit data directly through our unified RPC and API endpoints. Anyone building meta-protocols can create new things on top of the BRC-20, Runes, and UTXO model inscription model, increasing the number of experimental contents. Any developer can directly obtain data from the API, which is crucial for building wallets, DeFi applications, or swap products. To showcase the powerful capabilities of this tool, we created Protorunes.

Protorunes builds on this foundation, allowing the use of Runes assets, which currently have limited operability. Runes can be inscribed or issued, and their transfers can be tracked through partially signed Bitcoin transactions. Similar to BRC-20, but it lacks the programmability that most people are accustomed to. Protorunes allows a Runes asset (existing in UTXO) to be built on the Runes protocol using RunesStone messages. We have a concept called Protoburn, which you can Protoburn into UTXO; it still exists in UTXO, and the transferability and all functionalities run on top of Runes. Then, that asset can be used within sub-protocols in the Protorunes framework. Remarkably, this allows for the construction of deterministic, fully transparent programs that align with the WASM virtual machine architecture in a completely decentralized manner, and can be tracked on-chain. This greatly expands the content that can be built, allowing for everything from other ecosystems, DeFi applications, swap products, lending stablecoins, synthetic assets, derivatives, games, and more, now to be built using the Runes asset class. This truly empowers the Runes team and developers with new capabilities and possibilities.

PANews: BRC20 and Runes have been developing for some time now. BRC20 created a wealth effect that attracted a significant amount of attention to the BTC derivative market, while the subsequent Runes protocol, which was expected to mature, did not receive the anticipated market response. How do you view the changes in their popularity and market fluctuations? With the decline in interest, many people have begun to speak negatively about it. What are your thoughts on these negative viewpoints?

Alec Taggart: I think there are several reasons for this. First, BRC-20 was the first to emerge, creating what could be described as a mini bull market, where everyone rushed to inscribe these assets, and a lot of infrastructure was built around it. Exchanges began listing them. I would say that the initial impact of BRC-20 was more international, with many people from Asia being very interested in BRC-20. Therefore, Runes was like Casey's response to an alternative protocol. It has a different design, existing in UTXO, without needing to handle transfer inscriptions and multiple transfers. I think there was a huge push to launch it around the halving, and there was a lot of excitement surrounding its creation that day, with Runes having similar things like Runestone and RSIC that resembled Ordinals. There was a lot of hype on the day it launched. I think it got a bit overheated, and later everyone was anticipating what would happen to Bitcoin's price during the halving, while the market overall remained sluggish. So I think there was already a lot of activity; it just followed a very typical market trajectory. Looking back at Bitcoin's four halvings, Bitcoin's price usually starts to rise 3 to 6 months after the halving.

So many people think Runes will solve all problems, but in reality, it does not offer more in terms of programmability than BRC-20. Now we are entering the next phase, where many companies are starting to provide programmability for BRC-20, building programmability modules that support EVM smart contracts and indexers. We are working on Protorunes, and there are other things happening, like OP_CAT not being fully matured, and other meta-protocols emerging after we announced Protorunes. I think people are just waiting for a moment when they can do more with Runes, with better discoverability, a better user experience, and more appeal for those wanting to play and do things on Bitcoin.

PANews: Currently, there are wallets in the BTC ecosystem such as OKX, Ordinals Wallet, Unisat, and Xverse Wallet. How do you view the wallet landscape, and as a newcomer, what strategies do you have?

Alec Taggart: There are many excellent wallets. When you look across the field, many of the initial wallets started from the Stacks ecosystem and then added functionality for Ordinals, like Xverse and Leather. Xverse is probably one of the most versatile wallets, supporting many different assets and allowing connections to many different applications, very similar to the traditional wallets you are used to. OKX clearly has a great market, as they have an exchange that many people in Asia use. Then there is Unisat, which built its own marketplace and is developing a forked Bitcoin, focusing heavily on BRC-20. Therefore, I think for us, core differentiation lies in our emphasis on Runes and Protorunes.

Additionally, our infrastructure indexing product is something we hope other wallets will utilize, as it can provide better data for consuming indexes and new protocols, increasing utility. Therefore, we hope all wallets will start adopting our framework to expand the market. We are building these products for wallets and developers, not just for ourselves. Our differentiation mainly lies in providing an excellent user experience in the wallet, abstracting data handling, and offering outstanding discoverability. Everything you want to do is completely trust-minimized and non-custodial, directly in the wallet, with abstractions built around it.

So, we aim to position our wallet as a high-quality wallet that offers an incredible and enjoyable user experience, excelling not only in Bitcoin but also being novel and excellent within the entire wallet ecosystem.

PANews: From your perspective, what are the new opportunities in the BTC ecosystem for the future? What trends are worth looking forward to?

Alec Taggart: Following up on your previous question about the market, if you look at the growth trajectory of Ethereum, back in 2018, what Ethereum could do was very limited. Most of the time, you could use it to issue ICOs, create ERC-20 tokens or utility tokens, but there weren't many usable decentralized applications (dApps). At that time, it was just a promise of a bright future, but issuance was the core driver of innovation. Then you had Maker, Synthetix, Uniswap, and these DeFi applications began to emerge. Then you had stablecoins and synthetic assets, followed by features like yield farming and liquidity mining, which truly began to incentivize people to participate.

So, these are all things that need to happen to spark a lot of innovation and keep people interested in it. Therefore, there must be excellent tools and visualization features to demonstrate how these things work and their data performance, so others can track them. There also needs to be more things like stablecoins or wrapped BTC to increase liquidity in the space. More yield opportunities need to be provided for Bitcoin, and there need to be basic functionalities around swapping, lending, and yield. This is the next step that everyone is looking forward to. Therefore, as people work on building these functionalities at different levels, there will be many opportunities for exploration.

PANews: In this context, what are OYL's future plans? Will you issue a token to launch your own economic model?

Alec Taggart: OYL will issue its own token in the future.** With this Airhead series, we are also launching the concept of Whale Pass. You can think of the Whale Pass as a founding sequence collection of whales in the OYL ecosystem. The first benefit of purchasing an OYL pass is that you will actually receive an Airhead. You can think of this as not only a prepayment for minting but also receiving an Airhead, and there will also be a virtual balance on the pass that increases with each block. This is a way for us to continue doing some interesting things. Our plan is to ensure that everyone building these primitives can collaborate, and we will integrate these primitives into the wallet, with many things to do.

Protorunes is another aspect of our future plans, not just to help establish standards but also to build protocols on top of it. This will also be able to touch every part of our ecosystem. We build through wallets and indexing tools, so this will be a key part of creating more liquidity directly in the first-layer system, which will also be fully integrated with our business and closely related to our token.

For us, the key is how to leverage wallets, infrastructure, and indexing to build enough tools and surface space to create opportunities for developers and consumers to realize this is real and that there are more things to do, while also increasing long-tail experimentation on Bitcoin.

Additionally, these things are also future-oriented. When innovations like OP_CAT emerge on the first or even second layer of Bitcoin, they provide people with more tools for experimentation and building, making OYL and the OYL wallet the best platform for discovery and access within its ecosystem.