Original author: Grapefruit, ChainCatcher
Original author: Grapefruit, ChainCatcher
Today, the news that "the price of BRC 20 token Ordi broke through $10, and the market value exceeded $200 million" was circulated in various communities. And this token was issued online on March 9, and it was free at the beginning of the issuance. Users only need to pay the on-chain minting Gas fee to obtain a large number of ordi tokens. Suppose the user minted 1,000 ordi at the beginning of the release, and the value is now close to 100 million U.
Compared with airdrops, the myth of BRC 20 tokens making wealth is easier. Users do not need to participate in the inversion of operations on the chain, and do not need to worry about not being able to meet the harsh conditions. They only need to mint the tokens at the first time when the tokens are issued. Even when the early Bitcoin chain is not congested, the cost of gas fees on the chain is only A few U's are all it takes to get involved.
Catalyzed by the skyrocketing currency price and the wealth story of minting BRC 20 tokens, BRC 20 has now become a new narrative story in the encryption market and has been sought after by a large number of users.
It can be seen that BRC 20 is becoming a new track for users, project parties, and CEX to compete for layout. So, what exactly is BRC 20? As ordinary users, how should we participate in this new wealth code? What risks will they face?
first level title
What is BRC20? How to mint BRC 20 tokens?
BRC 20 is an experimental format standard for issuing fungible tokens on the Bitcoin network, created by Twitter user @domodata on March 8, 2023 based on the Ordinal protocol. Similar to the ERC 20 standard of Ethereum, it stipulates the name, circulation, transfer and other functions of tokens issued on Ethereum, and all token contracts developed based on Ethereum comply with this standard.
The main difference between BRC 20 and ERC 20 is that the Bitcoin network does not support smart contracts. It uses the Ordinal protocol to set inscriptions (inscriptions) into JSON data format to deploy token contracts, mint and transfer tokens, that is, developers can pass The Ordinal protocol creates and issues fungible tokens.
What is Ordinal again?
Ordinal (ordinal number), proposed in January this year, is a system for numbering satoshis (sats), the smallest unit of Bitcoin.
1 BTC = 100 million sats, originally each Satoshi unit is the same, that is, the 1 BTC held by Xiao Ming is the same as the 1 BTC held by Xiao Lan.
Through Ordinals, these sats can be arranged in a certain order and assigned a specific ordinal number, that is, the Ordinals protocol assigns a unique number to each Satoshi sats. This gives each satoshi its uniqueness, a numbered identifier that will allow users to track each sats on the blockchain. When the user attaches specific information, such as pictures, text, codes, etc., to the Satoshi sats, each Satoshi can become unique, which is the so-called Bitcoin NFT. The additional information is called "inscriptions", and the process of adding information to Satoshi sats is called "inscribe", that is, to inscribe "inscriptions" on Satoshi.
User @domodata believes that the Ordinals protocol can be used not only to issue NFTs, but also to issue homogeneous tokens. When the additional information (inscription) is added according to a unified protocol standard (JSON data format), it can become a homogeneous token BRC 20. To put it simply, BRC 20 can be understood as a variant of Ordinals NFT. The inscriptions on the NFT are pictures, and the inscriptions marked on BRC 20 are all text data (Text) in a unified JSON format. In BRC 20, the inscription is also used as an accounting book for BRC 20 tokens, which can be used to track every transfer of tokens.
BRC 20 mainly provides three standards for the issuance of tokens on the Bitcoin network, including the deployment of BRC 20 tokens, minting Mint, and transfer. Developers can complete the creation and issuance of BRC 20 tokens by following this standard.
At the same time as the release of the BRC 20 standard, @domodata launched the first BRC 20 experimental token ordi, with a total of 21 million issued. Early users only need to pay the GAS fee on the chain to mint. Now users can only buy it in the secondary market, the current price is 10 US dollars, and the market value is 210 million US dollars. However, @domodata also reminds users that this is just an implementation standard and does not have any investment value.
Take ORDI token creation as an example, users only need to enter the code below the image to create the token.
The figure shows that the JSON data text input by deploying ordi tokens has a total issuance of 21 million and a maximum of 1,000 coins per coinage. Among them, the user can change the field after "op" to represent the operation performed. Deploy represents the deployment of tokens, Mint represents the casting of tokens, and Transfer represents the transfer of tokens; Token, the user can enter the name of the token to be executed.
BRC 20 Three Contract Standards
Now users can perform operations such as token deployment and transactions through third-party tools. At present, related activities are mainly carried out through the Unisat wallet.
first level title
How to issue a BRC 20 token?
Users need to install the Unisat wallet (https://unisat.io/), and need to select the "m/86'/0'/0'/0/0" format when setting up the wallet, which supports the acceptance of NFT and BRC 20 tokens;
Withdraw BTC from CEX to the Unisat address, the address starts with bc 1 p;
Click on inscribe (meaning that the issued token inscription will be inscribed on Satoshi), and select BRC 20;
Submit and pay the gas fee;
first level title
How to buy a BRC 20?
The purchase of BRC 20 tokens can be divided into two situations: including new tokens that have not been mint, and tokens that have been mint.
As for the new coins that have not been mint, users do not need to buy them, they only need to pay the GAS fee on the chain to mint them.
The specific execution steps, the user uses Unisat to click inscribe, select BRC 20 - select Mint, enter the token name, select the number of copies of Mint to submit, and pay the GAS fee on the chain.
It should be noted that when paying the GAS fee on the chain with Mint tokens, during the peak period, users often need to pay a higher GAS fee than the displayed GAS fee, otherwise there will be a gas fee payment, and Mint will not succeed in the end. This is because Bitcoin network miners are sorted according to the gas fee, and the high gas is more likely to be selected for packaging.https://mempool.space/
For specific gas fees, please refer to:
For tokens that have been mint, if the user chooses to continue to execute the Mint function, the tokens that come out will be invalid tokens.
Users who want to obtain the corresponding tokens currently need to purchase through peer-to-peer OTC transactions. There are two main ways: one is to find a third party to guarantee the transaction privately, and it is easy to encounter scammers such as receiving money and not playing coins, or playing counterfeit coins, etc.; It is to go to a special trading platform to place an order transaction, such as UniSat's Marketplace. This trading market is similar to an NFT trading platform. The seller will place an order on the platform for the quantity and price of the BRC 20 tokens that he wants to sell. If the buyer buys, he needs to buy the seller's listing at one time. For all tokens in this order, you cannot choose the quantity you want to trade.
However, the first-time Unisat trading market requires a threshold, either an early Unisat OG user or 20 Unisat points.
In addition, on the Unisat website, users can also view the deployment time of BRC 20 tokens, the completion of Mint, the number of wallet addresses held, and the number of completed transactions. The more wallet addresses you hold, the more users buy.
first level title
BRC 20 Token Representation
Ordi——is the first BRC 20 token issued by @domodata. It was launched on March 9th. The total number of issued is 21 million, and the tentative price is 10 US dollars. The number of holders is 5,261, and the number of transactions is 62,936.
Nals——From a stalk, the combination of Nals and ordi is ordinals, which is the full name of the agreement. The token was launched on March 10, and Mint was completed on May 1. The total issuance is 21 million, and the current quotation is $0.9. The number of holding addresses is 1385; the number of transactions is 39546.
PIZA - Circulation 21 million, priced at $0.43.
Meme - 99,999 copies available for $91.
PEPE——meme coin, a token derived from ERC 20, is currently quoted at $0.68, with a total circulation of 42.096 million;
What are the relevant tools for BRC 20?
Third-party BRC 20 token casting platforms - Idclub; Looksordina; Unisat, etc., the only difference between the three is the handling fee.
BRC-20 _io - data platform to view BRC-20 token price and market cap
Unisat - a collection of wallets and marketplaces for BRC-20
Ordiscan—ordinal browser can view BRC 20 transactions, view Inscriptions and Collections addresses
Ordspace——BRC-20 and ordinal NFT data statistics platform, you can check the market value and price of BRC 20, etc.
BRC 20 is mostly meme currency, so be careful when buying
According to the BRC 20.io website, as of May 6, 128.61 million BRC 20 tokens have been issued, with a total market value of US$280 million and a trading volume of about US$4.27 million in the past 24 hours.
In addition, judging from the existing BRC 20 tokens, except for the first ordi token, the top market capitalization tokens are all Meme tokens, such as MEME, PEPE, PIZA, etc. These tokens are mainly hype-based. No real value. From the perspective of the number of players, there are only 5,261 holders of ordi tokens with the largest market value, which also means that the current number of BRC 20 players is very small, and the liquidity of tokens is relatively poor. .
The reason why BRC 20 is sought after by users is mainly that the issuance method of BRC 20 tokens is relatively fair and just. All casting users are treated equally, and the project party cannot reserve and issue additional tokens. Even the issuer wants to obtain the issued BRC 20 tokens. When you start casting like ordinary users, everyone is truly an equal participant in the ecology.
However, it should be noted that the current BRC 20 token is just a token, and where it will eventually go and what application it will have is still unknown.
Precisely because most of BRC 20 projects and tokens have no value and no application scenarios, BRC 20 has been opposed by the original users of the Bitcoin community, who believe that doing so only increases the congestion of the Bitcoin network and has no effect on Bitcoin. benefit.
However, some users believe that this has added new application scenarios to the Bitcoin network, and also attracted a new wave of enthusiastic users and developers to join the Bitcoin community, increasing the demand for BTC, which is conducive to the rise of BTC prices, because users are On-chain purchases of any BRC 20 tokens require payment in Satoshi.
Judging from the current results, the emergence of BRC 20 is most beneficial to miners and has brought huge income to miners. The Block data shows that the transaction volume of the Bitcoin blockchain jumped from $499.34 in February to $689.68 in March According to reports, Bitcoin miners earned at least $718 million in March, the highest level since May 2022.
In addition to BRC 20, ORC 20 and LTC 20 tokens were also born.
ORC 20 - is an upgraded version of BRC 20, which can change the initial supply and maximum coinage; there is no fixed number of characters in the token name (BRC 20 tokens only support 4 characters); allows users to cancel transactions; in addition, ORC 20 Token mandatory royalties, that is, holding or trading ORC 20 tokens need to pay royalties, similar to NFT.
LTC 20 - is the LTC-20 token test standard proposed by the Litecoin community following BRC 20, which is developed on top of the Litecoin Ordinals protocol.
