Is the BRC boom the "last carnival" for retail investors?
Written by: Cookie, BlockBeats
Annual " meme season" it came again and again.
This is a "season" of anxiety. The stories of wealth and freedom seem to be happening constantly, and the FOMO emotion of being afraid of not being able to "get on the bus" can overcome all unknown fears.
This is a "season" of self-doubt. Players who like to buy tokens based on fundamentals are prone to self-doubt, and those who work hard to support projects are prone to self-doubt. Manufacturing stories in batches, colliding successfully in quantity, everything is so "weightless". How confusing it is to work so hard to operate a project to build success in multiple directions.
Actually, there is nothing new under the sun. It's just that this time there is a new "casino" - the BRC-20 on the Bitcoin mainnet.
Suddenly, it became popular
Every community is swept by BRC-20 Token related content. "What is BRC-20?", "What's the difference between BRC-20 and Bitcoin NFT?", "How to buy?", "How to open trading permissions in UniSat's trading market?"... These questions are constantly being asked , and people keep answering. On Twitter, it seems that overnight all KOLs are looking at BRC-20, and various BRC-20-related Threads appear at an alarming rate.
Looked through the chat records of various WeChat groups. The CPU is fried:
There are even traces of BRC-20 on Xianyu:
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(Image source: @coolish)
From April 24th to May 3rd, a total of 1,815,157 inscriptions were added. Among them, 1,787,862 new text-type inscriptions were added, and only 3,122 new image-type inscriptions were added. It can be said that the Bitcoin NFT market has completely become a BRC-20 market. However, just a month ago, everyone's attention was still on the "picture".
Recently, The growth of inscriptions is almost entirely supported by text types, BRC-20 Token's Mint and Transfer both rely on the creation of new text type inscriptions
In the two days between April 30 and May 1, the number of BRC-20 transactions even accounted for half of all Bitcoin transactions, and the handling fee accounted for more than 30%. At present, the total transaction fees generated by BRC-20 transactions have exceeded 135 BTC.
BRC- 20 Changes in the proportion of the number of transactions in all Bitcoin transactions
The first deployed The price of BRC-20 Token $ordi has risen rapidly like a rocket launch. In a defunct BRC-20 OTC group, $ordi was still being sold for $0.088 each (1 token = $88) on April 19th. And on April 25th, in Ordswap’s Discord OTC, the selling price of $ordi was already almost above the unit price of $0.65 (1 token = $650). Today, the unit price of $ordi on the UniSat market has exceeded $8 (1 piece = $8,000). Since the amount of each pending order on UniSat is limited to 0.0005 BTC - 0.05 BTC, it is difficult for players to buy more than 300 $ordi in one transaction on UniSat.
$ordi price action from April 26th to April 30th (Image source: @Ca1aba93)
As the only BRC-20 trading market currently on the market, with BRC-20 Mint and Deploy functions, UniSat is extremely lively. Beginning on April 29th, UniSat was occasionally stuttered by the "charge" players. Since the number of BRC-20 Tokens that each inscription can represent is usually set to 1,000, 10,000 Mints means that 10 text-type Bitcoin NFTs must be minted. Players are afraid of missing the "Golden Dog" in the primary market. Raise the Gas crazily and submit Mint transactions to UniSat continuously.
The transaction fee rate data on the chain also reflects how enthusiastic the players are. Before April 20, the rate of 1-2 sat/vB was stable and accounted for more than 50% of the daily rate, and the rate of 20-30 sat/vB was already "stuck". But in recent days, we have even seen 100 - 125 sat/vB rates with a certain percentage.
It's hard to imagine that before the BRC-20 exploded like a Zibo barbecue, the popularity of the entire Ordinals agreement has actually slowed down. The "out of the circle" this time is as magical as the "two heavens of ice and fire".
In the early morning of April 9, Beijing time, the number of inscriptions exceeded the 1 million mark. In the following week, the number of new inscriptions added every day was not large, and even less than 10,000 appeared. At that time, the Spaces in the Chinese circle and even the entire Ordinals circle were almost all faces of acquaintances. The daily Space in the Chinese circle was about 30-60 people. Almost all the friends who chatted every night were familiar with each other, and there were few new faces.
During the period from April 9th to April 20th, the daily increment of the inscription There is a cyclical trough. (As shown in the red box of the blue histogram in the figure below) Before April 23, there was only one case where the proportion of BRC-20 transaction fees on the day exceeded the proportion of non-BRC-20 inscription transaction fees. Most of the time, non-BRC-20 inscription transaction fees account for a much larger proportion than BRC-20 transaction fees. (As shown in the red frame of the black and gray histogram in the figure below)
April 23rd, UniSat's BRC-20 market launch, But in the early morning of April 24, it was closed urgently due to business loopholes. It then reopened on April 27.
On April 24, OKX announced that its wallet plugin has supported the display/transfer of Bitcoin NFT. On the same day, Binance’s official Twitter also released a tweet saying “Ordinals, made simple”. On April 27, the OKX Chinese official launched a vote for "Do you want OKX to support BRC-20?", and gave a brief introduction to the Ordinals protocol and BRC-20 Token in the same tweet. The imagination of CEX entering Bitcoin NFT began to have a clear outline, and the rise of $ordi began to be noticed, and gradually "out of the circle".
Actually until now, I have not been able to figure out which point is the most direct detonation BRC-20 frenzy. Too fast, really too fast.
“Actually, a month ago, we almost Give up"
In various KOLs began to lead the majority of players to "Why didn't you catch the BRC -20?” In deep reflection, xiyu, Huan.sats, and Ivan, who have been active in the circle since the official launch of the Ordinals protocol, and who are well-known for their views/tutorial output or development, are in this wave. Appeared very calm during the fire.
xiyu discovered the relevant content of Ordinals from Twitter in February and began to study in depth. At that time, Bitcoin was entering a rebound market, and felt that Ethereum had no new stories to tell, so I started to look back and study Bitcoin. xiyu has also designed a cash system based on the defects of BRC-20, which can be used as an inscription to stabilize Token in the future, and this stable Token added to the system. Huan.sats learned about Ordinals from Decrypt's article on the second day after the Ordinals protocol went live on the mainnet and started research.
Ivan is BRC-1155 may also be the most ritualistic of the three. After being deeply fascinated by the Ordinals agreement, in order to express my love, I specially selected a MAYC with an orange background to commemorate my encounter with Ordinals.
As I have mentioned in past articles, they never envisioned that BRC-20 would develop so quickly.
Ivan was not very optimistic about BRC-20 at first, but he still held "It's okay to try ” mentality and support for “innovative experimentation” within the Ordinals ecosystem, Mint bought some $ordi. That night, because $ordi Mint published a bunch of inscriptions on UniSat that have not been confirmed by the network, seeing such excitement, Ivan raised the miner fee again. When talking about the development speed of BRC-20, Ivan recalled the casting situation of $meme at that time. $meme is the second deployed BRC-20 Token, with a total of 99,999 tokens, and each inscription can only represent 1 token of $meme. Ivan said that at that time, everyone was still muttering, 99999 inscriptions, can they really be finished?
There are so many new players in the Ordinals ecosystem, is it a good thing or a bad thing? All three believe that the advantages and disadvantages coexist, but the overall advantages outweigh the disadvantages. On the positive side, the Ordinals ecology has been "out of the circle" very successfully because of BRC-20, and more people have learned about Bitcoin NFT. As for the disadvantages, the angles of the three are different.
xiyu believes that the popularity of BRC-20 has crowded out the space of picture (art) Bitcoin NFT . (As we mentioned above, from April 24 to May 3, a total of 1,815,157 new inscriptions were added. Among them, 1,787,862 new text-type inscriptions were added, and only 3122 new image-type inscriptions were added. 1, accounting for only 0.172% of the number of new inscriptions.) But at the same time, xiyu also said that this is not actually a "disadvantage". Although he thinks this is an unhealthy status quo, he believes that the market will repair itself.
Xiyu's point of view happened to be mentioned in my chat with Blueberry. I made Bitcoin Pizzas and Blueberries made PixelBirds Sparrow. Before, we felt that the emergence of the Ordinals protocol gave small and medium-sized creators a stage with higher visibility. At the same time, because there is no smart contract, the project launch is more friendly to creators. Here may become a small but exquisite independent workshop, where small and medium-sized creators will grow together like independent game developers in the game circle. But now, the "Art Salon" is empty. At the same time, the skyrocketing gas fee and sluggish cultural atmosphere also temporarily make more creators take a wait-and-see attitude towards entering Bitcoin NFT.
April 24th, the eve of $ordi's "out of the circle" The million-dollar BRC-20 fraud case was thundered on this day.
A BRC-20 OTC group owner named Bzz.eth, on April 24 On this day, it was revealed that a large order was swallowed (opened a small account to claim a high price for the purchase, and after the seller transferred $ordi, he found an excuse to cancel the transaction, and then used an invalid Transfer inscription to shift the responsibility to the seller and refused to return it), backfired and increased the guarantee fee and Pass different prices between buyers and sellers to capture the difference. On March 20, BlockBeats interviewed the owner of the guarantee group. At that time, he disclosed that the average transaction volume was 300U, and the average daily transaction number was 20.
The process of swallowing coins and the subsequent discovery that they are the same person
With the launch of UniSat's BRC-20 trading market and Ordswap's guarantee service on the official Discord, the security of BRC-20 transactions has been greatly improved.
The story of $nals: I am a dirt dog , do you want to buy it?
This year's May Day holiday is busy for Null. He squatted in front of the computer screen 25 hours a day, waiting like a patient hunter for the new BRC-20 "Golden Dog" to appear, and then frantically Mint.
Through the screen, I can feel him snapping his fingers and giving me the name of the dish The pride with which he shared his accomplishments.
“$piza, $moon, $8888, $lowb, $#gua, $ngmi, $noot, $GMGN, $noce... I can’t remember if it was during the May Day holiday. Anyway, it’s recently, and some of them haven’t been sold out yet so I won’t be interviewed. Just say, is it BRC- 20 legend?"
In addition to lurking in a bunch of BRC-20 related discussion groups, he I also stared at the BRC-20 board on UniSat, mainly observing the two indicators of the number of Holders and the speed of Mint. Once he finds his favorite target, such as Toekn with a bunch of unconfirmed Mint transactions, he will immediately consider whether to raise Gas and charge. There will also be some situations where the gas pull is very low to create the illusion of FOMO, so in terms of decision-making, he pursues speed and at the same time takes caution.
Adhering to the principle of "selling flying and earning forever" and the Token screening experience accumulated in actual combat, Null It was very rewarding during the May Day holiday. He was initially attracted to the Ordinals ecology because of the picture-type inscriptions, and now he still insists on only saving his true love for pictures.
“The BRC-20 suddenly got up like this...We are all old players, Are you flustered? Anyway, as long as I don’t have a pattern, I’m not flustered. I’ll hold $ordi, sell the others as soon as they should be sold, and sell them for less profit. Can the wind of the capital market move forever when it blows to the Bitcoin mainnet? It doesn’t exist.” In the usual chats, Null gave me the impression that he was a carefree person, but this time he was a little sad, “I just wanted to collect some pictures at the beginning, after all, on Bitcoin, this matter we The two have said it N times, it’s cool, and it’s not expensive. So many people came at once, and with the benefits, things started to get complicated... I’m a leek, and I’m always going to go to the dog. I hope that people here can stick to their original aspirations of idealism.”
BRC-20 has a very The popularity is high, and the player base is not too large. The consensus building is not new but relatively easy. Everyone has a clear goal. It doesn't matter whether the story is good or not, but whether it can make money is important. Traffic, or influence, acts as a leverage during takeoff than ETH.
Because the name of BRC-20 Token is limited by 4 characters, a name named $nals The BRC-20 Token is sought after with stories like "Ordi + nals give Ordinals a complete home". $nals was actually deployed as early as March 10th, but it wasn't fully mint until May 1st.
$ordi + $nals = ordinals
After Mint was all done, the price of $nals took off at breakneck speed . According to the transaction data on UniSat, $nals completed a 20-fold increase in about 12 hours after Mint was all completed.
$pepe , close to 10 times
$moon, more than 5 times
$utxo, up more than 5 times from its lowest point
These take off The Tokens are all the same as $nals, telling nonsensical stories. It doesn't matter, emotions are the most important. Take a look at the following moves, do the "earth dog hunters" of ETH feel familiar?
ERC-20 and BRC-20 "Toad" join forces
All BRC-20 Tokens must be To the $moon
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Ordinals cannot do without a pen of $utxo
Why is there a "meme season"?
Huan.sats believes that if someone makes money, someone must lose money. Overheated speculation may lead to many New players face losses. At the same time, BRC-20 is not efficient enough as a ledger system itself, and there is a risk of being replaced by better technology (for example, the author of the agreement pointed out in the official document: Would also like to mention that the taproot enabled concept of issuing assets on the bitcoin blockchain is not novel, and Taro is unequivocally a better solution), the more popular it is, the more attention and discussion should be paid to the problems of the technology itself, so that the BRC-20 and even the entire Ordinals ecology will become more and more good.
Ivan believes that "out of the circle" is just the beginning, and what is more important is how to attract new players Stay in the Ordinals ecology, instead of slowly losing "people" as the possible heat in the future subsides. What needs to be considered is, does BRC-20 bring more and better project parties into the ecology for construction? If not yet, how can this be done? After all, only high-quality projects can continuously inject increments into the Ordinals ecology in the future.
In addition to sharing their own views, xiyu and Ivan also shared with me their views on other Ordinals elders Observation of the attitude of players and even veteran Bitcoin players.
According to xiyu's observation, the attitudes of old players towards Ordinals are roughly as follows:
1. Explore the ability to transfer part of the things on the Ethereum to the Bitcoin chain, and also It is a kind of contribution;
2. No objection, you can do whatever you like, as long as it is not a fork;
3. Take your own bitcoins, you guys Well done, bitcoin holders will benefit as well;
4. Don't try to cheat my bitcoin with pictures and data.
As for BRC-20, xiyu said that most of the old players do not express their views on BRC-20. It may also represent an attitude in itself.
Ivan’s observation is that the old Ordinals players’ attitude towards BRC-20 is “polarized” . Some people think that BRC-20 is a Token protocol system. Although the support in various aspects such as transactions and bookkeeping is still relatively backward, they firmly believe that there will be better supporting infrastructure to solve the problem in the future, and they are optimistic about the future development of BRC-20. On the contrary, some believe that BRC-20 has deviated from the center of gravity, and building BRC-20 on Bitcoin with strong security and decentralization is putting the cart before the horse, and it is purely superfluous.
About the technical shortcomings of BRC-20 itself, both xiyu and Ivan emphasized that "centralization Dependency" problem.
Ivan: From a technical point of view, it is difficult for BRC-20 to achieve a smooth transaction process through inscriptions and a decentralized accounting system. After all, when the transaction activities on the chain become more frequent, the complexity of the transfer will increase the amount of data extremely large and difficult to track. At present, it is still necessary to rely on a single centralized project party to implement the relevant accounting system, and this is a systemic risk. of. However, the community generally prefers not to transfer the Token of the BRC-20 protocol to different chains for more convenient transactions and applications in the form of mapping or side chains, but only accepts the realization of related transactions on the native network of Bitcoin. operation to highlight its uniqueness. However, with the current technical support, in order to achieve the above more user-friendly operation process, this means that the BRC-20 protocol will need to sacrifice the decentralization of Bitcoin and instead welcome the support that relies heavily on centralization.
BRC-20 is specific to each Token, from the perspective of capital, there is nothing Special places, but BRC-20 as a whole has two very attractive incremental narratives:
2. Natural "ownership". Judging from the reactions of various communities, this is very appealing to new players. Since the BRC-20 Token deployer has no way to reserve any Token for himself, if he wants to control the board, he either spends Gas to Mint like ordinary players, or spends money to collect chips from ordinary players. Players feel that frying the "earth dog" on ETH is speculation, and frying BRC-20 is also speculation. Instead of being cut off by the "earth dog" on ETH by reserving the mouse warehouse of chips, instead of playing the so-called "value investment" project and watching CEX, institutions and market makers eat meat, it is better to "turn over and do it" on BRC-20 Owner".
Coinciding with the "meme season", ETH appeared again $ The myth of getting rich like PEPE, and the potential possibility of BRC-20 make players FOMO even more. Big CEXs such as Binance and OKX will list BRC-20 Token, right? It is still so difficult to get started now, there are still many players who will enter the game in the future, right?
As for why there is a "meme season"? Every time the "meme season" appears, it is "the right time, place and people". For example, $Squid "Squid Token" two years ago, because it appeared on TV and was dubbed as "community autonomy", revived from the ashes of Rug Pull, and flew into the sky again. After detonating market sentiment, $People failed to auction the constitution. This is "Tianshi", often boring and lack of hot market, will be the time for meme Token to perform. The "geographical advantage" is very simple. This is the world of Crypto. There have been many precedents for the increase of tens of thousands of times. The story of "meme speculation can be free" has been deeply rooted in the hearts of the people. As for "Renhe", the trend has emerged and emotions have been ignited. Is it really important to find logic on top of this?
"meme seasons" come and go like the wind, year after year. It’s just that in every “meme season”, players are always prone to have a sense of “anxiety about the end of the world”-how many times are there still chances of getting rich a hundred times or a thousand times? With eager desire, BRC-20 seems to have become a "land of hope". But, who wins and who loses? Is this game on Bitcoin really "the victory of retail investors" and "the last chance"?
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