Rapid Development of BTC Ecosystem Programmability Expansion Solutions

Since the beginning of 2024, while the speculation enthusiasm for the BTC ecosystem is not as high as in 2023, the technical progress has been rapid, especially in the area of programmability extension solutions. This article will introduce several notable BTC extension solutions, including Fractal Bitcoin and the programmable solutions of metadata protocols such as BRC20, CBRC, and ARC20.

Fractal

Fractal is a scalable framework virtualized based on the bitcoin core client software, which improves the overall network performance by recursively creating a tree structure. It is fully compatible with BTC, but activates the op_cat operator for more logic.

Fractal is developed by the Unisat team and is expected to launch its mainnet in September 2024. Its tokenomics include 50% mining output, 15% for the ecosystem, 5% for early investor pre-sale, 20% for advisors and core contributors, and 10% as community subsidies.

Architecture Design

Fractal encapsulates bitcoin core into a deployable blockchain software package (BCSP), running multiple BCSP instances on the Bitcoin mainnet through recursive anchoring. It makes some modifications to bitcoin core, such as shortening block confirmation times and increasing block sizes, to enhance performance.

Fractal has activated the op_cat operator, providing more possibilities for BTC scalability solutions. Different instances can communicate, enabling seamless asset transfer. BTC and other mainnet assets can be used on Fractal through decentralized bridging.

Security

Fractal enhances security mainly through three aspects:

1. Introduce joint mining, where one out of every three blocks is generated through merged mining with BTC miners.
2. The newly created instance chain can set specific block heights for protection during the startup phase.
3. Large miners can allocate computing power to different BCSP instances to enhance overall robustness.

AVM

AVM(Atomicals Virtual Machine) is the BTC smart contract implementation of the Atomicals Protocol. It creates a virtual machine that simulates BTC scripts, opening up multiple raw BTC opcodes, allowing developers to implement smart contracts through combinations.

AVM achieves Turing completeness through dual stack PDA. It operates in a sandbox that includes an indexer, instruction parser, and global state, enabling smart contract processing and state synchronization verification.

The AVM instruction set includes the complete BTC opcode, allowing developers to program using BTC's unused features. It is applicable to any metadata protocol with just minor adjustments to the indexer.

OP_NET

OP_NET aims to introduce smart contract functionality similar to Ethereum, but more in line with Bitcoin's characteristics. It is written in AssemblyScript and provides a complete and easy-to-use development library.

OP_NET retains the block consensus and data availability of Bitcoin, executing complex computations on Bitcoin blocks through the virtual machine OP_VM. It supports multiple programming languages and utilizes Tapscript to achieve advanced smart contract functionalities.

When interacting on the OP_NET network, users need to pay an additional fee. To expand DeFi applications, OP_NET provides a Proof of Authority system, allowing BTC to be wrapped as WBTC.

The OP_NET ecosystem covers multiple areas including decentralized trading, lending, market making, liquidity provision, cross-chain bridges, etc., including projects such as Motoswap, Stash, and Ordinal Novus.

BRC100

BRC-100 is a decentralized computing protocol built on the Ordinals theory, which implements complex DeFi functions through the addition of operations such as "burn" and "mint". It provides operations such as mint2/mint3 and burn2/burn3, allowing tokens to be converted between the UTXO model and state machine model.

The BRC-100 protocol stack includes multiple interoperable extension protocols, such as the BRC-101 governance protocol (, the BRC-102 automation liquidity protocol ), and the BRC-104 liquidity staking/re-staking pool protocol (.

The BRC-100 ecosystem includes inBRC) markets and indexers(, 100Swap) AMM DEX(, and 100Layer) liquidity protocols(, among other projects.

Programmability RUNES) Protorunes(

Programmable runes are an extension layer of runes that allows the creation of programmable assets with runes. The Proto-Runes Protocol is the main project among them, providing a framework for programmable runes.

The core mechanism of Proto-Runes includes Protoburn and Protomessage. Protoburn allows for the conversion of runes into a form used by sub-protocols, while Protomessage is used to execute operational instructions within the sub-protocols.

The Proto-Runes protocol processes rune protocol and sub-protocol messages through an indexer, using LEB128 encoding to represent protocol fields and messages. Currently, the first Protorune has completed Protoburn, providing a functional model for on-chain governance.

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