After 2 days of launch, here are some things you need to know about Fractal

Author: c00k1e, Rhythm BlockBeats

Special thanks to: xinyi

It has been two days since the official launch of the Fractal mainnet. Before we review these two days and look forward to potential opportunities ahead, I found a somewhat amusing issue------

Many people still don't know where to buy $FB…

This issue was most directly reflected on the night of September 9th at 11 PM when a "new FT protocol" called FLUX suddenly emerged. Somehow, foreigners also noticed this "inscription plate" that we are most familiar with, and there were even foreigners asking where to find $FB OTC…

So before we continue with the content below, let's first look at the channels where $FB can be traded:

• The current CEX where $FB can be traded/deposited/withdrawn is CoinEx, which was established in 2017. The Epic Sat "史诗聪" that was mined during the previous halving was auctioned in collaboration with CoinEx and ViaBTC, making it a reliable background.

• Dot Swap has launched a swap pair for Bitcoin and $FB, allowing for direct on-chain trading of $FB or creating liquidity pools for $FB.

Now, let's review the Fractal over these two days.

$FB Circulation Status

How much $FB is currently in circulation?

Aside from the 1 million $FB airdropped, the remaining portion reserved in the white paper includes 15% from the ecosystem treasury, which transferred out 60,000 $FB. These 60,000 $FB were transferred in batches of 10,000 to 6 addresses, perfectly matching the 6 projects that received the Season 0 Grant announced by Fractal. Only one of the Fractal addresses has moved, and since 60,000 $FB is not much, it can be considered as part of the non-circulating supply.

10% of community incentives, which amounts to 1 million $FB, is the portion from the airdrop.

5% for pre-sale, with a 7-month lock-up period, has not moved.

5% for advisor shares, with a maximum of 20% usable per year, has not moved.

15% for core contributors, with a 7-month lock-up period, has not moved.

So the current circulating market cap is approximately (1 million airdrop + 25 coins block reward * number of blocks mined 7783) * 20 ≈ 24 million USD, while the FDV is 4.2 billion USD.

Mining ------ It's really competitive

The current total network hash rate of the Fractal network is 261.604 EH/s.

How to explain how competitive this data is? The current total Bitcoin network hash rate is about 661 EH/s, meaning Fractal's total network hash rate is about 40% of Bitcoin's.

We can understand this more deeply through rough estimation. An Antminer S21 has a hash rate of 200 TH/s, with an official price of 5400 USD. Currently, the largest mining pool on Fractal is MaxiPool, which has mined 1335 blocks, equating to 1335 * 25 = 33,375 $FB, averaging 16,687.5 $FB per day. MaxiPool's total hash rate is 3,703,010 TH/s, so without considering electricity costs, based on the current $FB price, an Antminer S21 would take 5400 / (200 / 3,703,010 * 16,687.5 $FB * 20) = 300 days to break even.

I hope that small miners participating in mining through leasing hash power and holding hash power NFTs are not losing money. FSIC has currently mined a total of 259 $FB, averaging 0.068 $FB per NFT. FSIC has only leased hash power for one year, and based on the situation over these two days, each NFT might only receive about 12.4 $FB over a year.

Thus, the floor price of FSIC has been declining…

The reason for the competition is mainly due to the entry of large mining pools that have come in to mine together, meaning they can earn $FB while mining Bitcoin, leading to some negative voices claiming that the large pools are "free-riding."

Additionally, who is the top mining pool? A hash rate of 101 EH/s cannot possibly come from small miners; it can only be from large pools. Looking at the data on mempool.space, it seems there is nothing that matches, so could this be a coalition of multiple mining pools?

FLUX ------ Familiar inscription plate, never late

Around 11 PM on September 9th, the same day Fractal launched, FLUX emerged, clearly well-prepared. Each inscription costs 0.05 FB, with a total of 21,000 inscriptions, all completed in one hour.

The project team previously had "entrepreneurial" experiences in the Pipe ecosystem and runes. I don't want to delve into the controversy regarding FLUX's fees and the overall similarity to the Pipe protocol, as there is no need to get caught up in this point. After all, the off-market price once touched 50 USD. Furthermore, although Fractal has announced that it will not index inscriptions before block height 21,000, FLUX is a UTXO-based FT protocol, simply put, it is similar to runes, not built on the Ordinals protocol like BRC-20.

I just want to remind everyone not to be too "narrow-minded." Comparing the introductions of Pipe and FLUX on GitHub, they are almost identical, which is why I say they came "well-prepared"------the thing is still the same thing, just in a different place.

This is Pipe

This is FLUX

Besides FLUX, @gm7t2 has already created an Ordinals browser for the Fractal network, and the inscription numbers displayed on it have reached XXXXX. Seeing a bunch of copied CryptoPunks, mfers, and Moonbirds, it indeed feels like a return to the early days of Ordinals.

These inscriptions exist but will not be indexed. I also believe there will be little room for speculation like the previous "cursed inscriptions," so everyone can just enjoy the spectacle.

However, today, the Cat Protocol using OPCAT was released. This project has genuinely innovated using OPCAT. Friends who want to learn more can check their official documentation.

What opportunities are worth paying attention to?

I believe there are two phases.

First, before the Ordinals protocol is activated at block height 21,000, if someone brings over something like Pipe, whether by renaming Atomicals or not, I wouldn't be surprised. However, I am not very optimistic about whether it can be speculated upon, as the reason FLUX gained traction is that everyone hasn't had time to analyze whether it truly has innovative points. We need to observe how the price will perform once people react.

Besides, it seems there won't be too many interesting things before block height 21,000… although I really hope there will be.

After that, there will be more things to play with, and I think the following are worth paying attention to:

• The emergence of meme projects on Fractal similar to those on ETH/Solana/Base. Currently, there are reports of Sats pump fun, satx.fun, and BVM wanting to create something similar on Fractal, all of which are "familiar faces"------Sats pump fun has Jack Liu on its advisory team, satx.fun seems to be from the Moto system, and BVM is just BVM… So, the key points here may be two: first, which one is more willing to spend money to create a meme project, and second, which one can attract quality meme token initiators. Additionally, we should also see if the network experience can remain as smooth once Fractal really heats up.

• The NFT projects currently worth paying attention to are honzomomo and "Fractal Goose." The former has been operating its official Twitter since July with decent popularity, but I don't quite understand how they claim to be the first Fractal small image series and how they will ensure that. The latter is the previously popular Goose project on the mainnet, Goosinals. The reason for optimism is that their team has been promoting "Fractal Goose" since August 11, stating it will still be a free public mint, a "First is First" 10K series. Furthermore, for other image projects, it may be difficult to shift consensus to Fractal or even face resistance, but the Goosinals series was originally created by the community using Dmitri Chernia's pixel goose image generator for MoMA Postcard and inscribed it, with multiple chains featuring geese at that time, so there isn't such a severe "mother chain" sentiment or value dependence. Lastly, the Chinese-speaking community is a pillar in the Goosinals community, and Chinese players are inherently interested in Fractal.

So for all of the above, here are the preparations we can make now:

• Buy some $FB, distribute it across multiple addresses, and when new projects arise, use multiple addresses to participate together to prevent a single address from being stuck with UTXO lagging behind.

• For "Fractal Goose," generate your favorite goose images in advance using the pixel goose image generator (https://goosegenerator.com/) and be ready to mint once block height 21,000 is reached (currently looking like this, but keep a close eye on the official Twitter updates; as for the inscription tool, UniSat will definitely be launched by then).