Technical Advances in BTC Ecosystem Regarding Programmability

Since the beginning of 2024, the BTC ecosystem has made significant progress on the technical level, especially in the area of programmability expansion solutions. This article will introduce several highly regarded projects, including Fractal Bitcoin and the programmable solutions of the BTC metadata protocol.

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 enhances the performance of the entire network. Fractal is fully compatible with Bitcoin and its infrastructure, but activates the op_cat operator, allowing for more logic to be implemented.

Fractal is developed by the Unisat team and is expected to launch its mainnet in September 2024. Its token economics include 50% from mining, 15% for the ecosystem, 5% for early investor presales, 20% allocated to advisors and core contributors, and 10% for community subsidies.

Fractal fully virtualizes the bitcoin core client and encapsulates it into a deployable and runnable blockchain software package. By utilizing modern virtualization technology, it achieves efficient hardware performance sharing. The block confirmation time is changed to 30 seconds or shorter, and the block size is increased to 20 MB to ensure performance and low latency.

In terms of security, Fractal introduces joint mining, with one out of every three blocks generated through merged mining with BTC miners. The newly created virtualization instance chain will experience a period of initial vulnerability 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 and opens up multiple raw BTC opcodes. Developers can implement smart contracts by combining Bitcoin scripts to define the creation and transfer rules of assets.

AVM achieves Turing completeness through a dual-stack PDA. The virtual machine runs in a sandbox that includes an indexer, instruction parser, and global state. The instruction set of AVM contains the complete BTC opcode, allowing developers to program using BTC's unused features.

AVM is a framework that can be applied to any metadata protocol, such as BRC20, ARC20, Runes, CBRC, etc., with just minor adjustments to the indexer under the virtual machine.

OP_NET

OP_NET aims to introduce Ethereum-like smart contract functionality to the Bitcoin network. It provides a complete, compact, and easy-to-use development library, primarily written in AssemblyScript.

OP_NET retains the block consensus and data availability of Bitcoin by executing complex calculations on Bitcoin blocks through a virtual machine (OP_VM). It supports multiple programming languages such as AssemblyScript, Rust, and Python.

OP_NET is compatible with SegWit and Taproot, and its token design is not tied to UTXO, which avoids the risk of mistakenly sending tokens to miners. The ecosystem covers multiple areas such as decentralized trading, lending, market making, liquidity provision, and cross-chain bridges.

BRC100

BRC-100 is a decentralized computing protocol built on the theory of Ordinals. It achieves complex DeFi operations by adding new actions such as "burn" and "mint" to brc20. The main operations include mint2/mint3 and burn2/burn3, used for token generation, destruction, and state conversion.

The BRC-100 protocol and its extension protocols are mutually compatible and support cross-chain operations. Currently, there are extensions such as BRC-101 (Decentralized On-Chain Governance Protocol), BRC-102 (Automated Liquidity Protocol), and BRC-104 (Liquidity Staking/Re-Staking Pool Protocol).

The ecological projects include inBRC (the first BRC-100 market and indexer), 100Swap (an AMM exchange based on the BRC-102 protocol), and 100Layer (a liquidity protocol on Bitcoin L1).

Programmability RUNES (Protorunes)

Programmable runes are an extension layer of runes that allow the creation of programmable assets with runes. The Proto-Runes Protocol is a standard and specification that provides a framework for programmable runes. It converts runes into the programmable form Protorunes through the Protoburn mechanism.

The operational mechanism of the Proto-Runes protocol relies on indexers to handle the Runestone features in the rune protocol, and then processes the protocol messages of sub-protocols in order. Recently, the first Protorrune (QUORUM•GENESIS•PROTORUNE) has successfully completed the Protoburn, demonstrating the functional model of on-chain governance implemented on Bitcoin L1.

These technological advancements have brought more possibilities to the BTC ecosystem, driving its development in terms of programmability and smart contract functionalities.