Biteye 2024 Outlook: BTC ecosystem/modular blockchain/DA/DePIN/new public chains, etc.

Author: Biteye Core Contributors @0xdddd111, @lviswang, @FINT1121, @Jesse_meta, @pikpika6, @shouyi16, @0x_Way

Editor: Biteye Core Contributor Crush

Community: @BiteyeCN

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*Full article is about 12,000 words, estimated reading time is 15 minutes

On January 11th, BTC ETF was finally approved by the SEC, and today 11 BTC ETFs officially started trading on the US stock market, making these days a milestone moment in crypto history.

With the ETF bringing BTC into a larger mainstream world, and the upcoming BTC halving event at the end of March, 2024 is undoubtedly an important year for the crypto track.

So, in the middle of 2024, what tracks are worth our attention? In this issue, we bring you an analysis and outlook of the seven major tracks in 2024, jointly written by the Biteye community partners.

01 BTC Ecosystem

Looking back at 2023, the narrative of the BTC ecosystem is clear. After Domodata proposed the BRC20 standard on March 8th, a series of writings quickly flourished on the BTC main chain. The narrative of new assets overlaid with BTC's narrative led to the first new asset, ORDI, breaking through a $1000M market value within a year.

As on-chain transactions increased, issues of network congestion and high transaction fees began to emerge. When popular writings were minted, BTC's GAS fees rose to levels that ordinary users found unacceptable. The need for BTC scalability also took the stage in the future narrative. So, what are the directions to watch for the future of the BTC ecosystem?

1. BTC New Asset Issuance Protocols

Atomicals, an optimization project for Ordinals and BRC20, solved the problem of BRC20's overreliance on centralized chain indexing. It utilizes and extends the Bitcoin UTXO model, treating each Satoshi's UTXO as a specific Atomical token or digital object. $ATOM is the first token of Atomicals, minted through POW, considered more decentralized by the community, in line with BTC's original ideology. Due to its technical superiority, it currently enjoys strong community consensus.

SRC-20, a token standard developed based on the Stamps protocol, BTC Stamps invented by @mikeinspace, differs from Ordinals in that the image/text information of Ordinals is stored in witness data, while Stamps data is stored in transaction outputs. This difference results in an important feature of Stamps, that it can always exist on the BTC chain, requiring all nodes to synchronize this data.

Bitmap, the first metaverse project in the BTC ecosystem, maps each transaction input in a Bitcoin block to a block (Parcel), forming a block or region. Bitmap also introduced the BRC-420 protocol, where BRC420 is an asset protocol based on Bitmap, combining multiple writings to create a complex writing, creating assets ranging from small characters and pets to various types of assets.

Other protocols to watch include CBRC, Veda, Rune, and Sat.

Summarizing the types of BTC ecosystem assets, explaining the technical differences behind ARC-20, SRC-20, etc. in plain language.

2. BTC Infrastructure

The current mainstream BTC infrastructure projects are as follows. In the future, BTC infrastructure will mainly be divided into the following directions:

• Cross-chain bridges
• IDO platforms
• DEX exchanges
• Lending platforms
• Trading markets

3. BTC Scalability Solutions

The development direction of BTC scalability solutions mainly includes two ways, one is the Lightning Network, and the other is sidechains.

1) Lightning Network

The Lightning Network, proposed by Joseph Poon and Tadge Dryja in 2016, is one of the Bitcoin Layer 2 solutions.

The Lightning Network consists of payment channels, aiming for fast and low-fee transactions off-chain, allowing users to pay without confirmation, with final settlement on the main chain. In theory, the Lightning Network can achieve processing speeds of millions of transactions per second.

The Taproot Asset protocol is an asset issuance protocol proposed by the Lightning Labs development team on October 19, 2023. The main platform for issuing and trading Tarproot Asset tokens is Nostr Aeest, with tokens such as T$TREAT & $TRICK mainly used for staking.

2) Sidechains

Stacks $STX: Stacks is the most comprehensive L2 development in the BTC ecosystem, with a consensus algorithm using POX Proof of Transfer.

Through anchoring transactions, by packaging transactions and broadcasting block information from the Stacks chain to the Bitcoin network, ensuring the security of its transactions.

Stacks has a complete execution environment, where any application that can be built on chains like Ethereum can be built on the Stacks layer.

Transaction validators and miners in Stacks can stake $STX and $BTC respectively to mine $BTC and $STX tokens to maintain network security.

Looking at Stacks' roadmap, the launch of the Nakamoto network and SBTC release in Q1 this year will be important milestones in the development of Stacks, worth paying attention to.

3) Other

In addition to the protocols mentioned above, other BTC scalability solutions worth noting include the RGB protocol, Bitcoin sidechain projects Rootstock $RIF, BitVM, BEVM, and others.

02 Modular Blockchains and Data Availability DA

1. Modular Blockchains

Modular blockchains are specialized blockchains that handle specific functions such as execution, consensus, settlement, or data availability, relying on other blockchains or services to perform remaining tasks.

This design strengthens the security of projects and saves project teams energy to focus on developing core features. Modular blockchains decouple the various functions and components of blockchains to solve performance bottlenecks of traditional monolithic chains. Each module is provided by a professional provider to customize blockchain solutions.

There are many projects to watch in the direction of modular blockchains:

• Celestia ($TIA)

Celestia uses off-chain methods to achieve data availability, ensuring data is cheaper and more efficiently available. While Celestia