Overview of BTC Ecosystem Programmability Expansion Plan

The BTC ecosystem is developing rapidly at the technical level, especially in terms of programmability expansion solutions. This article introduces several highly regarded solutions: Fractal Bitcoin, AVM, OP_NET, BRC100, and programmable runes.

Fractal

Fractal is a scalable framework virtualized based on the Bitcoin Core client software. It creates a tree structure recursively, where each layer of the blockchain can improve the overall network performance. Fractal is fully compatible with Bitcoin, but activates the op_cat operator, allowing for more logic to be implemented.

Fractal is developed by a team and is expected to launch its mainnet in September 2024. It will issue its own token, with 50% generated through mining, 15% for the ecosystem, 5% for early investors in a presale, 20% for advisors and core contributors, and 10% for establishing partnerships and liquidity.

Fractal completely virtualizes the bitcoin core client, encapsulated as a deployable blockchain software package (BCSP). By recursively anchoring on the Bitcoin mainnet, it independently runs one or more BCSP instances. This is similar to running multiple virtual machine instances on a computer (BTC mainnet ) with Fractal's BCSP instances (.

To enhance user experience, Fractal has made modifications to bitcoin core: the block confirmation time has been shortened to 30 seconds, and the block size has increased to 20MB. Fractal has activated the op_cat operator, providing an exploratory testing space for BTC scaling solutions.

In terms of cross-chain assets, different instances can communicate and achieve seamless transfers between different layers through a universal asset transfer interface. Assets such as Bitcoin and BRC-20, Ordinals, etc. can be bridged through decentralized means.

The security of Fractal relies on its hash power. It introduces joint mining, where one out of every three blocks is generated by merging mining with BTC miners to prevent 51% attacks. Therefore, attracting BTC miners to participate is the key to Fractal's success.

AVM

AVM)Atomicals Virtual Machine( is the BTC smart contract implementation of a certain protocol. It creates a virtual machine that simulates the BTC script and opens up multiple raw BTC opcodes. Developers can implement smart contracts through Bitcoin script combinations to define asset creation and transfer rules.

AVM maximizes the capabilities of BTC's original opcode. It achieves Turing completeness through a dual-stack PDA, operating within a sandbox that includes an indexer, instruction parser, and global state.

The AVM instruction set contains the complete BTC opcode, allowing developers to program with BTC functionalities that are not enabled on the mainnet. AVM is an architecture suitable for any metadata protocol, requiring only minor adjustments to the indexer.

OP_NET

OP_NET is committed to introducing Ethereum-like smart contract functionality on the Bitcoin network. Transactions on OP_NET only require the use of native BTC, without the need for other tokens to pay node incentives or transaction fees.

OP_NET provides a complete, compact, and easy-to-use development library, primarily written in AssemblyScript. It retains Bitcoin's block consensus and data availability, executing complex computations on Bitcoin blocks through the virtual machine )OP_VM(.

The OP_NET node runs a WASM virtual machine, supporting multiple programming languages. The smart contract code is compressed and written into a BTC transaction, generating a UTXO address that is regarded as the contract address.

When users interact with OP_NET, they need to pay an additional fee of at least 330 satoshis, in addition to the BTC transaction fee. OP_NET provides a Proof of Authority system that allows BTC to be wrapped as WBTC.

The OP_NET ecosystem includes projects in various fields such as decentralized trading, lending, market making, liquidity provision, and cross-chain bridges.

BRC100

BRC-100 is a decentralized computing protocol built on the Ordinals theory. It adds new operations such as "burn" and "mint" to brc20, and through the combination of these operations, it records the token balances and statuses of different addresses in the indexer, enabling complex defi operations.

BRC-100 provides mint2/mint3 and burn2/burn3 operations, allowing tokens to be securely converted between the UTXO model and the state machine model. Computing power and state transitions can be extended through the BRC-100 expansion protocol.

The BRC-100 and its extension protocols are collectively referred to as the BRC-100 protocol stack, and all extension protocols are mutually compatible. Currently, there are the BRC-101) on-chain governance protocol (, the BRC-102) automated liquidity protocol (, and the BRC-104) liquidity staking/re-staking pool protocol (.

There are 3 main projects in the BRC-100 ecosystem: inBRC) the first BRC-100 market and indexer(, 100Swap) an AMM DEX( based on the BRC-102 protocol, and 100Layer) a liquidity protocol on Bitcoin L1(.

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Programmability Runes ) Protorunes (

Programmable runes are an extension layer of runes that allow the creation of programmable assets with runes. These assets can exist in UTXO and support operations similar to AMM.

Proto-Runes Protocol is the main project for Programmability runes, providing a framework for Programmability runes. It implements a DEX similar to Uniswap on the Bitcoin network, supporting atomic swaps of rune assets and the creation of liquidity pools.

The key mechanism of Proto-Runes is Protoburn, which allows the destruction of runes and their conversion into a representation specific to the sub-protocol. Protomessage is the operational instruction within the sub-protocol, implemented by encoding it in the Protostone structure and parsing it by the indexer.

In the Proto-Runes protocol runtime, the indexer first processes the Runestone features in the rune protocol, and then processes the protocol messages of the sub-protocols in sequence. To avoid complexity and potential security vulnerabilities, the Proto-Runes protocol prohibits the recursive execution of prototype messages.

Recently, the first Protorune)QUORUM•GENESIS•PROTORUNE( has completed Protoburn. It serves as a reference implementation of the Protorune standard, aiming to provide governance functionality for project tokens.

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