Latest Progress on the BTC Ecosystem Expansion Plan

The Bitcoin ecosystem is undergoing a technological revolution, with various scaling solutions emerging. This article will introduce several highly regarded BTC programmability scaling solutions, including Fractal, AVM, OP_NET, BRC100, and programmable runes.

Fractal

Fractal is a scalable framework based on the virtualization of the Bitcoin core client software. It recursively creates a tree structure, where each layer of the blockchain can improve the performance of the entire network. Fractal is fully compatible with Bitcoin, 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 have been announced, with 50% coming from mining, 15% for the ecosystem, 5% for early investor presales, 20% for advisors and core contributors, and 10% as community subsidies.

In terms of architectural design, Fractal encapsulates the Bitcoin core client into a deployable blockchain software package, recursively anchoring multiple instances running on the Bitcoin mainnet. It makes some modifications to the Bitcoin core, such as reducing block confirmation times and increasing block sizes. Fractal also supports cross-chain asset transfers and decentralized bridging.

To enhance security, Fractal has introduced a joint mining mechanism, with one out of every three blocks generated through merged mining with BTC miners. The newly created virtual instance chain will undergo an initial vulnerability period during the startup phase, and operators can set specific block heights to provide protection.

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 Bitcoin script combinations.

AVM achieves Turing completeness through a dual-stack PDA, and its instruction set includes the complete BTC opcode. This makes AVM a native pioneer network for the expansion of the BTC ecosystem. AVM is an architecture that is almost applicable to any metadata protocol, requiring only minor adjustments to the indexer under the virtual machine.

OP_NET

OP_NET aims to introduce Ethereum-like smart contract capabilities to the Bitcoin network. It retains Bitcoin's block consensus and data availability, executing complex computations on Bitcoin blocks through the execution of the virtual machine OP_VM.

OP_NET supports multiple programming languages and enables advanced smart contract functionality using Tapscript. The smart contract code is compressed and written into BTC transactions, generating a UTXO address that is regarded as a contract address.

The OP_NET ecosystem covers multiple areas including decentralized trading, lending, market making, and includes projects like Motoswap, Stash, and Ordinal Novus.

BRC100

BRC-100 is a decentralized computing protocol built on the Ordinals theory. It achieves complex DeFi operations by adding new operations such as "burn" and "mint" to brc20. BRC-100 provides operations like mint2/mint3 and burn2/burn3, allowing tokens to be converted between the UTXO model and the state machine model.

The BRC-100 protocol stack includes the BRC-101( decentralized on-chain governance protocol), the BRC-102( automated liquidity protocol), and the BRC-104( liquidity staking/re-staking pool protocol), among other extension protocols. Currently, the BRC-100 ecosystem has projects such as inBRC, 100Swap, and 100Layer.

Programmable Runes

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

The key mechanisms of Proto-Runes include Protoburn(, which destroys runes and converts them into a form used by sub-protocols), and Protomessage(, which executes operation instructions in the sub-protocols). The Proto-Runes protocol processes the Runestone features in the rune protocol through an indexer, and then processes the protocol messages of the sub-protocols in sequence.

Recently, the first Protorrune QUORUM•GENESIS•PROTORUNE has successfully completed Protoburn. This is a functional model for on-chain governance implemented on Bitcoin L1, providing governance capabilities for project tokens.

These expansion schemes inject new vitality into the Bitcoin ecosystem, providing developers and users with more possibilities. With the continuous development of technology, we have reason to expect that more innovative applications will emerge in the Bitcoin network in the future.