The Bitcoin ecosystem improved by memecoins, new protocols

The market value of BRC-20 tokens exceeded $4 billion shortly after their launch in January, and the Bitcoin ecosystem has seen a remarkable recovery.

According to a December 15 research report published by Cointelegraph on cryptocurrency exchange Bitget, Bitcoin (BTC) miners' earnings from on-chain payments increased from 1.7% in August to 19.57% in November. Meanwhile, daily mining revenue from block rewards exceeded $40 million in November. The nominal digital asset has gained 161% year-to-date.

Invented by Bitcoin developer Casey Rodermore in January, BRC-20 tokens have gained popularity as one of the biggest technological advances in the 15-year-old blockchain. Bitcoin Ordinals is a numbering system that allows for the tracking and transmission of a unique number for each satoshi, or 1/100 millionth of a Bitcoin. Combined with a writing process that adds a layer of data to each Satoshi, users can mine unique digital assets on the Bitcoin blockchain.

The Ordinals (ORDI) token – the first memecoin created through the BRC-20 standard but not connected to the original protocol – currently has a market value of $1.34 billion. Meanwhile, researchers note the emergence of other Bitcoin token standards, such as ARC-20 from the Atomic Protocol, adding value to the Bitcoin ecosystem.

“Unlike Ordinals, which rely on third-party brokers to order asset transactions, the Atomic Protocol ARC-20 standard uses Bitcoin's smallest satoshi as its smallest asset. This allows Atomics assets to track a complete transaction history without relying on any third-party provider.

Currently, the Atomic Protocol consists of ARC-20 tokens, imperishable tokens, Bitcoin domain names known as “realms”, and on-chain data object storage known as “collection containers”. On the Atomics protocol, it costs a total of 55.8 BTC ($2.4 million). The total number of digits on this protocol is 2.69 percent on ordinals,” the researchers wrote.

Despite high gas fees, there is strong community interest in building BRC-20 tokens. Using the example of the SATS (SATS) memecoin, researchers noted that despite the gas bill costing more than $15 million, SATS was fully mined on September 24, with 21,107,258 minnts and 36,061 holders. “[Layer-two solutions such as] The Lightning Network will serve as the largest technical foundation supporting the large-scale adoption of Bitcoin payments,” the researchers concluded in their 2024 forecast.

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