The 15th pizza festival, a snapshot of the Bitcoin ecosystem

15 years ago, 10,000 bitcoins for two pizzas was taken as a joke, and 15 years later, bitcoin hit a new all-time high, but OKX Wallet announced that it would stop supporting Runes.

debate between Bitcoin and BTCFi has never stopped, the stablecoin bill has been established, and Satoshi Nakamoto's great idea of peer-to-peer electronic cash has been grabbed by the government, central banks, and traditional financial giants today.

Where is the Bitcoin ecosystem headed? Let's dig deeper!

Admittedly, 15 years later, there have been more abundant business formats around Bitcoin, and there are already 429 applications in the Rootdata Bitcoin ecological graph, ranking in the top 10. Infra, Layer 1, Layer 2, NFTs, Ordinals, Runes, and various applications around PayFi and DeFi have emerged one after another, and they have also become the main narrative for a time, fueled by capital.

When the tide goes out, you can see who is swimming naked and who is doing things seriously.

Is BTCFi dead?

Many people ask this question, should it be more accurately understood that the Bitcoin staking track is dead? According to the user's understanding, if the large-scale reversal and the market capitalization/price depression are dead, then this track is really dead. However, we also have to see another angle, that is, from the perspective of the project party, do they make money? Are they still building? If you look at it this way, it's interesting.

Babylon gradually lost its voice after the last subsidy user gas arrived, but it didn't stop building. On May 9th, the second phase of the mainnet was launched, and on May 16th, a single transfer of 10,000 bitcoins was transferred to babylon phase-2 to provide penalizable security, with a total of 50,000 bitcoins pledged, which is converted into a TVL of $5 billion.

On top of that, B² and Merlin have both entered Alpha recently, and you read that right, it's Merin, and they've been working silently either. Lorenzo has launched a crypto wallet IDO and contracts, and the new narrative of "on-chain investment banking" has begun to bear fruit, and Lombard has recently cooperated with Pendle and Aave to enhance the liquidity of Bitcoin assets; Nubit Showcases Bitcoin Thunderbolt Protocol at FBC' 25; Sol continues to expand its on-chain microstrategy footprint with Chainlink CCIP on Solana.

It's not all hard work, a project starting with B, Chinese Twitter has only updated 2 pieces of content since May, one of which is still a pizza festival lottery.

Also inscribed runes Ordinals?

OKX Wallet chose to no longer support Runes, which is understandable, after all, this is a product for the masses, and the BTC ecosystem has now faded out of the mainstream and returned to the original origin.

Most of the creativity in this part has something to do with OP_Return, and this round of Bitcoin upgrades has also made some assets really antique. Is it reasonable that Bitcoin has been reaching new highs, but the assets surrounding Bitcoin have become bells in the opposite direction? All have a project, not happy anymore.

Unisat's Bitcoin Mystery Garden

If you want to talk about true love, Unisat is absolutely true love for Bitcoin and the Bitcoin ecosystem, which I believe will not be refuted by peers, capital and users. The team is stumbling on Bitcoin, and although there are positive and negative reviews, everyone admits that when it comes to the Bitcoin ecosystem, Unisat cannot be ignored.

Let's first take a look at what flowers Unisat has planted in the land of Bitcoin:

UniSat Wallet

is a wallet that supports Ordinals, Runes, BRC-20 and rare satoshis and has multiple terminal products, which can be compatible with mainstream asset management needs.

UniScan

browser is an essential entry infrastructure for blockchain and ecological protocols, Uniscan can can provide a full range of data services for ecological projects and users, and ensure the consistency of various data structures, such as BTC and Fractal addresses. If a new protocol is added, Uniscan can can also be compatible with the access, maintaining the data consistency of complex protocols under the same address.

UniSat Marketplace

, the BRC-20 asset trading platform based on PSBT, has become a mainstream inscription market after its launch in April 2023, and has integrated wallets into an all-round product for issuance, IPO, trading, and fundraising.

PizzaSwap

PizzaSwap has been upgraded from BRC-20, and the new brand marks that it is no longer limited to BRC-20 assets, but aims at the entire Bitcoin ecosystem. PizzaSwap began to test and deploy on Fractal to complete the productization, and the domain name was upgraded to an independent domain name and developed independently. How do I get from Fractal to Mainnet? The answer is open cooperation, and PizzaSwap will cooperate with OKX Wallet and L1 F to break through the protocol restrictions, embrace the mainnet, and support more decentralized transactions of new assets in the future.

Support for Fractal Bitcoin (FB)

UniSat is a core enabler of Fractal Bitcoin, helping to build the Fractal ecosystem by providing infrastructure support (e.g., BRC-20 index open source, Runes activation).

Alkanes protocol

This is a new star meta protocol on Bitcoin Layer 1, which simply adds a smart contract "plug-in" to BTC. Write code in Rust, compile it into WebAssembly (WASM), compress it and stuff it directly into the Bitcoin blockchain, with the Metashrew indexer, the on-chain status is clear at a glance, safe and transparent! With the support of smart contracts, this must be paid attention to, and it is definitely a big event in the future.

This seems to have been mined, and the UniSat infrastructure may gradually support Alkanes. Wallets and browsers come first, minting and market functions may gradually follow, and the Swap module will also be compatible in the coming period.

Last year, UniSat partnered with the Layer 1 Foundation to promote the BRC-20 standard upgrade, with the goal of achieving a fully decentralized AMM mechanism, similar to the trading experience of Uniswap. In addition, UniSat enhances asset interoperability through PizzaSwap and cross-chain bridges, laying the foundation for the DeFi scene of the BTC ecosystem.

It can be said that these are all essential infrastructure for ecology! Many people may criticize, Unisat, why do you do everything, I'll be fair, there's no way, no one does the infrastructure, and it's not well maintained, so stop when you say stop... This must not grit your teeth on your own? Everyone is staring at issuing coins, friends, issuing coins also needs wallets, protocols, chains, and DEXs, don't you do a good job of these things, and let users use code to play assets?

hammer of the Bitcoin resurgence

, I think the most difficult and promising ones are Fractal Bitcoin and PizzaSwap.

Fractal Bitcoin

is a Bitcoin extension developed by the UniSat team, based on the Bitcoin Core code, which is fully compatible with existing Bitcoin wallets, tools, and mining equipment. It is unique in that it scales itself with Bitcoin itself, using a fractal design to improve network performance, while retaining Bitcoin's security and decentralization features.

It is worth mentioning that Fractal Bitcoin has been supported by more than 90% of the computing power of the entire network, especially the addition of Foundry, the largest compliant mining pool in the United States, through the innovative Cadence Mining model, Fractal has been able to share the computing resources of Bitcoin, further enhancing the security and stability of the network.

As an underlying protocol, Fractal Bitcoin uses the FB protocol to reduce the block confirmation time from 10 minutes to 30 seconds, and supports multiple protocols such as BRC-20 and Runes, significantly improving transaction efficiency. At present, Fractal Bitcoin has been launched for almost a year, and its TPS is still stable at around 170, far exceeding the 7-10 TPS of the Bitcoin mainnet, indicating that the protocol is highly active and transactions are cheaper, faster, and more efficient.

What are users doing?

According to the OKX and Fractal explorers, the main active behaviors found are inscription minting, trading, Defi's swap and liquidity management, and $FB transfers, among others.