Bitcoin Newcomer Fractal: Ecological Revolution or Follower?

Since September, Fractal has sparked a new wave of excitement in the Bitcoin ecosystem, with a large number of users participating in its related assets and gameplay, leading to a surge in on-chain gas fees. There are three main reasons why Fractal has generated such a significant response: first, the overall market is currently sluggish, lacking fresh stories; second, influenced by a certain wallet's previous generous airdrop, many users are placing a high value on Fractal's launch, with tens of millions of addresses participating in tasks during the testnet phase; third, the high returns brought by asset protocols like Cat20 have continuously fueled the profit-making effect, causing Fractal's popularity to keep rising.

In addition, the official hunger marketing of a certain wallet has also contributed to the hype. Originally, the circulating supply of the airdropped FB was very small, but as on-chain competition intensified, the price of FB soared, becoming a "golden shovel" and indirectly accelerating the development of Fractal.

Fractal is a scaling solution based on the Bitcoin core code, aimed at improving transaction efficiency by accelerating block time and expanding block capacity. It is fully compatible with the Bitcoin mainnet, allowing users to trade on the Fractal network and interact and sync with the mainnet. As a native expansion solution, Fractal enables cross-level secure asset transfers. Bitcoin and assets such as BRC-20 and Ordinals can be bridged through a decentralized bridge. The underlying mechanism employs a dynamically replaced rotating MPC signature mechanism, while also taking into account the characteristics of the BRC-20 standard.

Fractal is functionally similar to the Bitcoin testnet, supporting some features that have not yet been activated on the mainnet in advance, providing a testing ground for complex applications. It allows users to participate in a real environment and provide feedback, similar to the significance of Layer 2 EVM for Ethereum.

Fractal was developed in collaboration with a well-known wallet and a native cryptocurrency fund. The wallet has over 900,000 active users weekly and has received multiple rounds of financing. The fund's investment portfolio includes several well-known projects and has extensive experience in exiting and developing commonly used blockchain applications. The strong partnership between the two parties provides robust support for Fractal.

Fractal adopts the same PoW consensus mechanism as Bitcoin, which means Bitcoin miners can seamlessly switch to Fractal mining using existing hardware, achieving a twofold benefit. Fractal mining is divided into two methods: permissionless and merge mining, with two out of every three blocks generated through permissionless mining, and one generated through merge mining.

Fractal also introduced the OP_CAT opcode, which can bring more development possibilities to the Bitcoin ecosystem, such as on-chain applications, smart contracts, and more.

The total supply of Fractal token FB is 210 million, with 50% used for PoW mining, 15% as the ecosystem treasury, 15% for core contributors, 10% for community subsidies, 5% for presale, and 5% for advisors. Apart from mining, all other tokens have a lock-up mechanism.

Currently, the most popular in the Fractal ecosystem is the CAT20 protocol, but the lack of clarity regarding project party information poses a risk. BTCTerminal is a comprehensive trading market that supports querying Mint progress, wallet balance, and more. UniWorlds is a metaverse project based on Fractal, receiving official resource support. After the BRC20 function is activated, on-chain gas remains high, but the performance of leading projects is average.

For retail investors, the new narrative and high popularity brought by Fractal are attractive, but risks should be taken into account. Miners can mine both BTC and FB at the same time, but the value of FB depends on ecological development. The entry of large capital may drive ecological development, but it may also weaken the voice of retail investors.

Overall, Fractal has few innovations, mainly focusing on compatibility and optimization of the mainnet. The ecosystem is still in its early stages, and future development awaits market validation.