UniSat Controls BRC-20 Protocol? Vicious Competition in the Token Market Opportunities

UniSat unilaterally announced the upcoming update to Ordinals v0.13.0, triggering opposition from other industry stakeholders including domo. However, UniSat has chosen to ignore the dissent and stated that the update will proceed as planned. Beneath the vast market interests of BRC-20, a fierce and covert market competition is gradually brewing.

UniSat Announces Upgrade to v0.13.0 Jubilee

The event originated last night on 1/2, with the Mingwen Exchange and UniSat announcing the upgrade to Ordinals v0.13.0 Jubilee. They emphasized that they would ensure there is no protocol split, indicating their hope for other indexers to follow suit.

If other indexers, including Magic Eden and OKX Wallet, do not upgrade together, there will be version discrepancies in Mingwen across different exchanges, leading to settlement errors and double-spending issues, potentially harming user assets.

Asset Security | Discrepancies in BRC-20 versions lead to the suspension of related transactions on some platforms

Community Opposition to BRC-20

However, not all community members approve of this upgrade, especially after a security incident:

Best in Slot points out serious bugs in v0.13.1

The Ordinals aggregator Best in Slot stated on Twitter that the latest BRC-20 v0.13.1 update has serious bugs and may have other potential issues. They strongly recommend that all BRC-20 indexers stick to using the 0.9 version of the Ordinals protocol until this issue is resolved.

The team stated that stability should be the top priority for BRC-20. Financial protocols worth billions of dollars cannot withstand untested version upgrades.

Best in Slot proposed "The Freeze" to prevent such security incidents from happening again. The proposal suggests that BRC-20 tokens should only use extensively tested and proven-to-operate flawlessly Ordinals versions, especially version 0.9.

domo accuses UniSat of controlling BRC-20

Subsequently, BRC-20 founder domo stated on Twitter that UniSat unilaterally upgraded the Ordinals protocol to version v0.13.0, which had not undergone extensive testing. This lack of respect for other industry indexers may pose potential harm to the BRC-20 protocol.

UniSat's goal is to control the BRC-20 market. domo stated that from the timing of the update and the incentive policy delay, it is evident that this is not just a technical update event but a carefully planned business strategy by UniSat to gain dominance and control over the BRC-20 protocol.

demo hopes the community can reject the fork proposed by UniSat and support the protocol's maintenance in a non-profit, security-first manner, similar to what the Layer 1 Foundation, supported by demo, is doing.

TRAC says it's not feasible to maintain version 0.9 forever

Benny, the founder of the decentralized indexer project TRAC, agrees that there is a need for more testing time to safely carry out protocol updates. However, he also stated that it is not feasible to maintain version 0.9 indefinitely.

UniSat Persists with the Update

Half an hour after domo's post, UniSat promptly reaffirmed their position to do their best to promote the Ordinals Jubilee upgrade to ensure the update progresses as scheduled.

However, the team stated that they would try to prevent a split in BRC-20 and Ordinals protocols, clarifying that a split is not the same as a fork, where the latter is incompatible and will not affect each other, while the former will generate different versions of assets on the same network, causing ongoing bilateral impacts and higher complexity, which should be prevented as much as possible.

From UniSat's recent post, it is evident that they are sticking to their original strategy and are in direct opposition to domo and Layer 1 Foundation.

Community Members' Opinions

Many community members expressed confusion and disapproval of why UniSat would voluntarily allow the possibility of a protocol split, merely to capture market interests before the infrastructure is more mature.

However, some community members stated that domo is also speaking to protect their own interests because the BRC-100 protocol they introduced is based on Ordinals v0.9, whereas UniSat is more inclined to promote protocol progress.

Issues Highlighted in the BRC-20 Market Opportunities

Intense Competition Due to Huge BRC-20 Interests

Amid the continuous market enthusiasm for Mingwen and BRC-20, competitors are calculating their moves, hoping to seize the rare opportunity, leading to the current fierce competition.

In an environment where there is a lack of communication, intense competition that prioritizes interests will hinder industry development, potentially turning everyone into losers, with ordinary users being the biggest victims.

Inadequate Mingwen Infrastructure

This event once again reveals the inadequacy of Mingwen's infrastructure. Whether it is a complete governance and upgrade framework, code auditing tools, or even token standards, they are all still in continuous iterative development, making it a relatively immature industry, indirectly leading to the above problems.

Bitcoin | What are the security risks arising from the incomplete BRC-20 infrastructure?