Bitcoin has consistently been the top cryptocurrency with a market cap of over $1.2 trillion. That’s roughly 55% of crypto’s entire market cap at the time of writing. 

But since BTC holders can do very little with their coins — basically, send, receive, and/or hold — 99.8% of this huge market cap is lying idle. Conversely, BTC’s utilization rate is a meager 0.2% vs. 17% for ETH, 14% for Polygon and about 4-6% for Avalanche, Solana, etc. 

Thanks to Ordinals, however, the doors to innovations that’ll improve Bitcoin utility slammed open in 2023. It showed that creating NFTs and other non-fungible assets is possible on the world’s most decentralized and secure L1 blockchain. 

This marked a giant leap towards making BTC more usable, practically relevant, and valuable beyond price actions for the masses. Over 67 million ordinals have been inscribed in the past year, testifying its demand and PMF. 

More importantly, Ordinals sparked progressive developments like BRC20, Runes, etc. and set the ground for the next wave of Bitcoin’s adoption drivers. Projects like Fractal Network are harnessing this shift and building user-centric solutions to enhance Bitcoin programmability. 

As a member of the UTXO Alliance and Bitcoin community, solving instrumental questions is Fractal’s core mission. It rises above L2 vs. Ordinals/Runes narratives and takes a holistic approach to make DeFi more secure, reliable, and accessible. 

Programmability is Bitcoin’s next meta

Ordinals gave new vigor to Bitcoin-native innovators by bringing NFTs to the network and shining the light on future possibilities. While at a more subtle and short-term level, it offered a much-needed lifeline to BTC miners pre and post-Halving. 

It’s clear that Bitcoin is nearing that level of maturity where a majority of the miners’ income will come from fees, as Satoshi had mentioned in the white paper. 

Ordinals are set to create a positive feedback loop in this context. More utility means more transactions, more fees, more revenue for miners, and more security. The instrument has generated about 6.8K BTC in fees (~$441 million) so far, which mainly went to miners. 

Nevertheless, although NFTs are great for capturing retail mindshare, they’re not enough from aadoption and value creation perspective. Bitcoin-based NFTs showed the way but to actually expand the network’s utility, we need genuine programmability. 

Runes have risen to this occasion, potentially doing for Bitcoin what ERC20 did for Ethereum — enabling fungible tokens. The fact that Runes have consistently dominated over BRC20s signals the community’s demand for deeper, more utility-driven Bitcoin innovations than NFTs or collectibles. 

Programmability is the next logical stage in Bitcoin’s evolution and there’s growing consensus among devs in this regard. With Ordinals, BRC20, Runes, and Layer-2-oriented innovations like Nervos’s RGB++ protocol, the individual tools are quite ready. 

That’s where Fractal — a multi-layer solution running 2 UTXO layers (a layer 1 and a layer 2) as well as an EVM layer 1 — enters the scene, working as a unifying/culminating force for the above developments. 

Unleashing the power of converging tech

We learned from Ethereum’s journey that fragmentation is not welcome. Diversification is, though, and we need a vibrant suite of solutions flourishing in any ecosystem, especially Bitcoin. 

Enabling varied Bitcoin-powered dApps and tokens while avoiding walled gardens is Fractal’s key purpose. So the team has tapped into all the major developments in Bitcoin programmability to build a user-friendly and utility-rich platform. 

That too, while causing minimal disruptions to Bitcoin’s existing architecture and value propositions. It’s the mark of true grassroots innovation for community empowerment. 

Contrary to account-based models that foster centralization, Fractal’s UTXO framework brings back real decentralization. It also simplifies state management while efficient parallel processing boosts scalability. 

The combination of Bitcoin-grade encryptions and advanced zero-knowledge implementations ensures that users don’t sacrifice privacy for transparency. They can have both. 

Fractal’s unique framework allows users to seamlessly move between its UTXO and EVM Layer 1s via the Confluence Bridge. This unlocks staking and bridging functionalities compatible with the network’s native $FRA token. 

Building on this infra, the team launched Fragments, a novel launchpad for Inscriptions and BRC20s. It’ll boost programmability by letting users deploy, mint, trade, list, and buy inscriptions at minimal costs. The platform will also support BRC20 staking, cross-chain swaps, etc. and of course, Runes. 

Besides refining and improving its platform, Fractal has also been very impressed with Nervos, particularlyisomorphic binding contained in the RGB++ spec — a better, next-gen version of bridges. With it dApps and protocols access a seamless cross-chain value transfer mechanism. 

While Fragments incentivizes a fungible token boom, the RGB++ integration will catalyze dApp innovation on the network. Bitcoin DeFi will become stronger as a whole and users will have a plethora of choices. 

Developers building on Fractal will get immense support from its Inscription Accelerator, which currently caters to BRC20-related projects. From technical assistance to co-marketing and GTM strategies, it gives all the ‘training wheels’ to the makers of Bitcoin’s future. 

This season will be the most action-packed in Bitcoin’s history as programmability takes the ‘digital gold’ to a new level. Fractal is leading this drive, along with its partners at the UTXO Alliance and, above all, the vibrant Bitcoin community. It’s about time the next one billion users join the journey.