Dialogue with UniSat Founder: Showcasing the achievements since the launch of the Fractal Bitcoin mainnet, criticism is a great motivation

Author: Weilin, PANews

Fractal Bitcoin has shown significant growth since its mainnet launch on September 9. One month after the mainnet went live, the TPS of the Fractal mainnet stabilized at over 200 tx/s, generating over 900,000 wallet addresses within 30 days and creating 347 million on-chain transactions, with an average daily on-chain transaction volume exceeding 10 million. On October 12, UniSat announced on platform X that the UniSat Runes market has officially launched on the Fractal Bitcoin mainnet. On October 15, Fractal Bitcoin announced the recipients of the first season of grants and opened applications for the second season, with each recipient from the first season receiving 5,000 FB. Although the project is still in its early stages, these data and progress indicate that Fractal Bitcoin has attracted widespread attention and active participation.

Recently, PANews had a conversation with UniSat founder Lorenzo, discussing user concerns about the optimization of BRC20 and runes, perspectives on the value and potential of various assets, the latest project developments, and the roadmap for the coming months. Currently, PizzaSwap has been launched, and users have successfully created liquidity and conducted transactions. Lorenzo believes that the implementation of PizzaSwap is significant for the development of the BRC20 protocol.

Lorenzo stated that most of the current doubts and negative opinions are related to the functionality and experience of the supporting infrastructure. Criticism serves as a great motivation, helping the team continuously calibrate product delivery. Lorenzo also shared the roadmap for the coming months, which includes the introduction of Runes, the advancement of CAT20, governance, Swap, and protocol upgrades, as well as enhancing cross-chain Swap and PizzaSwap.

Here is the detailed transcript of this interview:

PANews: Since the mainnet launch on September 9, how has user participation and market response been for Fractal Bitcoin? Can you share some relevant data?

Lorenzo: Fractal is still in a very early stage; it has only been five months since we started from the testnet. The enthusiasm and in-depth research from the community on social media regarding Fractal have actually exceeded our expectations. Regardless of whether the feedback is positive or negative, it shows that people are paying attention to Fractal, and we are very grateful for everyone's support.

One month after the mainnet launch, we observed that the TPS of the Fractal mainnet stabilized at over 200 tx/s, generating over 900,000 wallet addresses within 30 days and creating 347 million on-chain transactions, with an average daily on-chain transaction volume exceeding 10 million. As of October 13, the average daily on-chain transactions over the past seven days exceeded 15 million.

From the perspective of mining and computing power, the current combined mining power of Fractal (380 EH/s) has stabilized at over half of the total Bitcoin network power (650 EH/s). The combined mining mechanism ensures the security of the Fractal network, and we are quite pleased with this data, also thanks to the support from miners and mining pools.

Of course, all these data are very macro and can only form an overall impression of Fractal. The short-term enthusiasm is a great encouragement for us, but for the project, this is just the beginning. We still have a long way to go and need to continue working hard to repay the trust of the community.

PANews: In the Fractal Bitcoin ecosystem, users can mint various types of assets, such as tokens based on the CAT20 protocol, assets based on BRC20, assets based on the Stamp protocol, as well as domain names and small images. These have all received considerable attention. Recently, you also open-sourced the BRC20 protocol based on Fractal. Which assets are currently performing well, and how do you view the value and potential of various assets? What does the future look like?**

Lorenzo: It’s really gratifying to see so many interesting protocols coming to Fractal, in addition to the ordinals and BRC20 that we natively support. Observing on-chain transactions to see which protocols and assets users prefer and how consensus is formed is also very interesting. Blockchain makes everything so transparent and direct.

Different protocols have different characteristics and trade-offs. At this stage, we will try our best to provide network-level support for them. We look forward to native technological innovations based on Fractal's characteristics, but from the perspective of infrastructure support, we will not have any particular preferences and will try to maintain relative neutrality without obvious biases. In the near future, we will focus on optimizing mature protocols like BRC20 and runes, providing better interoperability with the Bitcoin mainnet, and enhancing infrastructure support for CAT20.

PANews: Due to the high enthusiasm for minting Stamp assets, the related minting platform experienced downtime from September 26 to September 27, causing dissatisfaction among some users. How does Fractal Bitcoin view such incidents, and will there be any intervention or guidance in the project's subsequent handling?**

Lorenzo: In the early days of Ordinals and BRC-20, our UniSat Marketplace also encountered serious bugs, leading to dozens of fraudulent transactions in the market. Our minting platform also frequently malfunctioned during network congestion, and at the end of last year, it was subjected to DDoS attacks, resulting in intermittent maintenance. So we fully understand the challenges projects face in new protocols and network environments.

Especially in the past 30 days since the Fractal mainnet launch, users have inscribed approximately 278 million inscriptions, averaging over 9 million inscriptions created daily. Our team has endured significant system pressure, and I believe it has also been a considerable challenge for different project teams.

We believe that excellent projects can stand out in such a harsh environment. For ecosystem projects, we will do our best to provide technical support and welcome everyone to come to us for communication and discussion.

PANews: There are many potential teams in Fractal Bitcoin's grants program, such as DeTrading and sCrypt. How is your progress with these partners? We also saw that the official Twitter recently announced a partnership with Bool Network. What are your plans regarding the ecosystem and collaboration?**

Lorenzo: Collaborations are progressing as planned, and updates will be shared with everyone at the appropriate time. The most important thing in the early stages is to lay a solid foundation. We will actively promote collaborations with cross-chain solutions, wallets, indexing, and miners. At the same time, we are also in contact with various protocol and application layer projects, such as Vault, DEX, derivatives DeFi teams, as well as gaming, NFT, and social projects, actively supporting their deployment efforts. Some teams are indeed doing very interesting things, which will have a very positive impact not only on Fractal but also on the entire BTC ecosystem. I believe they will announce when they are ready.

The Fractal ecosystem grants program is based on a retrospective system. For the Season 0 grant recipients, they have invested a lot of work in Fractal, developing excellent platforms and products, and making positive contributions to the ecosystem. We hope that this ecosystem will continue to attract and involve multiple forces in the future, integrating and communicating to open up new opportunities together. We are looking for partners who can build long-term with us; partners who can not only do well in their own products but also provide support and value to other ecosystem projects. In the coming months, we will place more emphasis on promoting the developer community together with our partners through continuous offline activities, builder houses, and targeted grants to encourage everyone to build with new technologies like the CAT protocol. We will also continue to provide them with technical implementation support, product conceptual advice, and marketing strategy guidance.

Additionally, regardless of whether a project receives funding, we will regularly or as needed arrange time to communicate and follow up with many teams to help them better advance their project development. This is not only to promote the development of the entire ecosystem but also to ensure that we can help these projects achieve greater success.

We will announce the Season 1 grant recipients in October (Note: publicly announced on October 15). As stated in our public roadmap at build.fractalbitcoin.io, we will soon share details about Season 2.

PANews: What impact has the recently launched Pizza Swap had on the ecosystem? What are the team's expectations for it?**

Lorenzo: PizzaSwap has been launched, and users have successfully created liquidity and conducted transactions. We are very pleased to receive user feedback, which greatly helps us improve our products. PizzaSwap aims to openly support all protocols that users care about through a modular system.

We believe that the implementation of PizzaSwap is significant for the development of the BRC20 protocol. As one of the maintainers of the BRC20 protocol on the BTC mainnet, we respect the governance rules of the protocol; while on Fractal, we can showcase the value of modular solutions, which can flexibly expand without affecting the core of BRC20, save block space through innovative transaction packaging methods, and construct a sustainable incentive model. We will continue to enhance PizzaSwap's functionality in Q4, such as the FB support launched this week, so please stay tuned for our subsequent feature updates.

PANews: As a Layer 2 solution for Bitcoin scaling, Fractal Bitcoin has faced some controversies since its launch, including doubts about "lack of functional pegging mechanisms, not being a true L2." What are the project team's views on these opinions?**

Lorenzo: Fractal Bitcoin has never been a so-called Bitcoin Layer 2. Fractal is a Bitcoin scaling solution that utilizes recursive layers to extend Bitcoin's scalability through Bitcoin Core software. The goal of Fractal is to provide developers with an innovative platform. We have already seen applications built by the ecosystem and our team that are very useful for users—such as block explorers, wallets, trading platforms, markets, support for native protocols like BRC-20, Runes, Ordinals, and support for new protocols like the CAT protocol, bridging implementations, and mining pool integration, all of which have been launched within just one month of the Fractal mainnet release. We welcome constructive feedback and look forward to learning and improving from the community. Regarding Bitcoin on Fractal, users can bridge Bitcoin to bBTC or sBTC using Bool Bridge or SimpleBridge. There may also be other bridging implementations in the future.

Currently, most of the doubts and negative opinions we face are related to the functionality and experience of the supporting infrastructure. What people may not realize is that Fractal and related protocols and products have successfully launched amidst the doubts. After a phased review, we realized that for a large system like Fractal, which has technical breakthroughs, our overall execution has been quite good. What everyone sees is only what we have delivered, while the team's most time-consuming work is actually behind the scenes, addressing various issues to ensure that there are no major mistakes, which is why people do not feel these on a daily basis. We also need to maintain this state, ensuring that the foundation is solid enough before optimizing some functional and experiential issues.

Criticism serves as a great motivation for us, helping us continuously calibrate our product delivery.

PANews: Since the issuance of FB, the price has declined, and some FB miners have indicated that the price has reached the shutdown price for some miners. How do you view this situation?**

Lorenzo: We do not comment on prices, but we do expect a considerable degree of volatility in the early stages. Prices reflect the supply and demand relationship in the market. We appreciate the participation of miners in the Cadence Mining mechanism (including a combination of permissionless mining and merged mining).

The mining mechanism of Fractal itself allows miners to switch to free mining or participate in combined mining at a lower cost at any time, and the reduction in free mining power does not affect the overall security of the network. Unlike Bitcoin, Fractal does not have a relatively clear shutdown price. Due to the existence of combined mining, we have observed that the overall computing power of Fractal tends to be stable and consistent, with much less volatility compared to the POW systems during the same period.

PANews: The Bitcoin scaling track is becoming increasingly crowded. Why did Fractal Bitcoin choose the sidechain technical path? How do you view the current competitive landscape of "a hundred flowers blooming"?**

Lorenzo: It’s a good phenomenon that more projects are focusing on scaling, as it represents more attention, more liquidity, and more quality projects and investors in the entire ecosystem. I think having more choices is also a good thing for users.

At this stage, Fractal Bitcoin can be seen as a sidechain parallel to Bitcoin, but this is far from the typical form of the system. A system supported by multiple instances (multiple fractal instances) that can accommodate various use cases is what is resilient and robust.

PANews: Compared to other Bitcoin scaling projects, what are Fractal Bitcoin's core advantages?**

Lorenzo: The positive feedback we receive from the community is that Fractal Bitcoin is truly built on top of Bitcoin.

Fractal's POW mechanism is inherited from Bitcoin, which can address the long-term issue of insufficient miner incentives caused by halving.

Many users appreciate the simple user experience we provide for end users, including the addresses they receive (such as Taproot, Native SegWit) being consistent on both the Bitcoin network and Fractal Bitcoin. They also like the ability to extend their applications from Bitcoin to Fractal and, if necessary, back from Fractal to Bitcoin.

Additionally, everyone should be aware that OPCAT has been activated on Fractal. This greatly enhances the network's programmability while maintaining a high degree of consistency with the mainnet. Innovations arising from this, such as the Cat Protocol, are strong evidence of Fractal's positioning as the best "testing ground" for the BTC mainnet. Fractal has created a BTC-native testing ground with real user interactions and market environments, and higher performance. Successful cases generated from this testing ground are likely to influence the development direction of the BTC mainnet and may further promote the revival of OPCAT on the BTC mainnet. This could very well be the next turning point for the Bitcoin ecosystem following the issuance of tokens on the BTC mainnet after the inscription protocol.

PANews: How does Fractal Bitcoin encourage community members to participate in the construction of the Fractal Bitcoin ecosystem? Are there plans to introduce more incentive mechanisms in the future?**

Lorenzo: Incentive mechanisms are a double-edged sword; when used correctly, they can have a significant impact. A strong incentive mechanism also comes with great responsibility, and we recognize our responsibility in guiding the community. Many developers choose to build on Fractal because they appreciate and recognize the possibilities that Fractal brings. They never actively seek funding from us; we only provide support afterward because they have contributed to the ecosystem, helping them achieve long-term success. Some teams first ask us whether we will provide funding before deciding whether to develop on Fractal; otherwise, they will not participate. We find that these teams tend to be more pragmatic or have weaker intrinsic motivation. Given that the funding amounts are not large, we know this will not truly incentivize these teams, so we prefer to spend time on teams that are more passionate and have greater potential. Overall, we are very grateful for the high-quality teams currently building on Fractal and will continue to improve in the future. Please stay tuned for our new season of grant programs, hackathons, developer-focused activities, and more exciting content.

PANews: What are the main goals and plans for Fractal Bitcoin in the coming months? Is there a possibility for FB to be listed on mainstream exchanges and increase liquidity?**

Lorenzo: Our technical and ecosystem public roadmap has been published at build.fractalbitcoin.io. We are happy to support technical integrations, including fiat on- and off-ramps. As for other liquidity issues, we have no further comments at this time.

Here are some highlights from the roadmap:

October: Introduction of Runes and advancement of CAT20

November: Governance, Swap, and protocol upgrades

December: Further enhancement of cross-chain Swap and PizzaSwap

PANews: When do you expect the next explosion in the Fractal ecosystem to occur?**

Lorenzo: Just like the earlier explosion of Ordinals on the Bitcoin mainnet, due to continuous innovation, Fractal's innovation and rapid growth could happen at any time in the future. What we can do is continuously improve the infrastructure to provide good soil for the seeds of innovation.