Whether it's UniSat or CAT Protocol (CAT20), the Chinese projects in the Bitcoin ecosystem always give off a sense of 'monk-like hermit masters.' They work quietly, innovate continuously, and are always at the forefront of technology in the Bitcoin ecosystem. Compared to Western projects, they always seem more low-key.
Dotswap is also such a project. From BRC-20, ARC-20 to Runes, and then to CAT20, they focus on the Swap track, gradually establishing their reputation through repeated technological iterations and innovations. After the birth of CAT20, Dotswap rapidly updated CAT20’s minting tools, Swap, LP pools, and even launched the order book DEX for CAT20 before UniSat.
What enables Dotswap to always respond to market trends promptly, and what makes them stick around until Fractal and CAT20 emerged and became well-known? With curiosity about these questions, Rhythm BlockBeats interviewed Lin, the co-founder and CEO of Dotswap. In addition to the story behind Dotswap, Lin also shared many of his insights on the current and future state of the Bitcoin ecosystem.
Years of accumulation, has BSV's strength fed back into the Bitcoin ecosystem?
BlockBeats: Does the Dotswap team have experience deeply rooted in the BSV ecosystem like UniSat and CAT20? If so, how has this experience helped in the birth and development of Dotswap?
Lin: Yes, we also have experience deeply rooted in the BSV ecosystem. Many developers in the BSV ecosystem, including ourselves, have never left the Bitcoin circle. Although BSV and the Bitcoin mainnet are two different ecosystems, they are both based on UTXO. When new things and opportunities arise, our understanding of the UTXO ecosystem allows us to enter the market more quickly and keenly than others.
We always keep an eye on every innovative opportunity in the UTXO architecture. After BRC-20 emerged, we noticed everyone was creating order-type markets, but no one was doing Swap. In the Ethereum ecosystem, Swap has already proven to be a very important infrastructure with great development, so we started working on this.
BlockBeats: From BRC-20, ARC-20 to Runes, and then to CAT20, Dotswap has always quickly followed the new technological hotspots in the Bitcoin ecosystem. How does the team iterate?
Lin: I must thank our excellent team; they are a group of engineers who are very passionate about the UTXO model. This passion gives our team a strong self-drive, allowing us to strive for the fastest possible completion with each product update and save costs for users.
Our team members have a rich understanding and knowledge of the technology stack, as well as a pragmatic attitude. Essentially, when we release the 'Coming Soon' news, new features go live within a week.
BlockBeats: There is an interesting saying that 'BSV developers are the backbone of the Bitcoin ecosystem.' How do you view this statement?
Lin: I can't say it's the backbone; that's overrating it. I can only say that BSV developers have an accumulation within the BSV ecosystem, which may make them run faster than others. Although the advantages of BSV developers exist, as the elegance of the UTXO architecture is discovered by more people and more are willing to invest effort in research, this advantage may soon be leveled.
In the current Bitcoin ecosystem, we can also see many developers without a BSV background, such as OKX and Magic Eden. I think they are the backbone.
How do you view the present and future of Fractal and CAT20?
After the launch of Fractal and CAT20, Dotswap quickly launched the minting tool for CAT20, followed by the launch of CAT20's Swap. These two important functional updates have attracted many new users and made Dotswap a very important part of the Fractal ecosystem. What views does Lin hold regarding the present and future of Fractal and CAT20?
BlockBeats: After CAT20, BRC-20, and Runes went live on Fractal, Fractal fell into a relatively quiet phase, and the price of $FB was lukewarm. Many believe that Fractal has reached a bottleneck in innovative gameplay. What do you think?
Lin: Fractal has only been online for just over a month; whether it's attention, hash power, or the activity of on-chain transactions, performance in these aspects has already been very excellent within such a short span. Achieving this has exceeded initial expectations. Moreover, many developers are entering the Fractal ecosystem with 'self-sufficient' resources to build. There will definitely be a large number of innovations emerging in the future; it just needs more time. For these 'self-sufficient' small teams without capital backing, they need even more time and tolerance. Particularly, CAT20 and the entire CAT protocol have some thresholds that need to be crossed to build applications on.
But in fact, the CAT protocol has been progressing continuously; CAT721 is about to come out, and the first project's gameplay requires locking a certain amount of tokens for a period to mint. This groundbreaking achievement implemented through contracts is completely absent in BRC-20 or Runes on the mainnet.
The criteria for evaluating the success of technological innovation may be the short-term surge in coin prices, but the value of technological innovation is not necessarily reflected through a short-term spike in coin prices. The only thing we can be sure of is that the quantitative changes brought about by technological innovation over time will definitely lead to qualitative changes. We cannot overestimate the short-term effects brought by technological innovation, nor can we underestimate its long-term effects.
BlockBeats: In the eyes of many players, CAT20 may still just be 'a new BRC-20/Runes' and cannot compete with last year's BRC-20 in narrative. How do you think CAT20 can change these players' perceptions?
Lin: I don't think we need to try to change anyone's particular view. If something is born and everyone thinks it's great, that is indeed 'a perfect start,' but then who will buy the holdings of every buyer later? We still need to return to the construction of the protocol itself, striving to create new and more interesting applications using advantageous technologies to attract more mainstream users' attention. Under the guidance of good ecosystem projects, everyone will naturally accept and understand.
Everyone can have their own views, but I believe that protocols and applications that emerge from sufficient market competition will possess strong attractiveness and advantages. The Bitcoin ecosystem must have these different perspectives, or competition. In this competition, those who believe will receive sufficient rewards, and it will allow Bitcoin to continue to grow amidst competition.
But from my personal perspective, I believe that CAT Protocol is a pioneering and completely different thing from Layer 2; it is a smart contract system based on miners and a layer consensus. The reason I don't think BRC-20 has 'complete originality' is that similar practices have been seen long ago on platforms like Omni and Counterparty. The smart contract system based on miner verification, namely CAT, can maintain state within Bitcoin transactions, laying the groundwork for more interesting smart contract innovative applications.
However, at this stage, more infrastructure is still needed to make CAT more user-friendly. We have created a DEX for CAT20, and UniSat has also done so, while support for CAT20 in the UniSat wallet has just gone live. The infrastructure needs some time to be perfected before more subsequent development can occur.
BlockBeats: Some players believe UniSat is not proactive enough in marketing Fractal, and directly raising $CAT to create a wealth effect is necessary for Fractal and CAT20 to break out. What do you think of this viewpoint?
Lin: Different groups have different expectations for CAT20; some hope for $CAT to rise, some hope for $CAT to reflect more value with rising coin prices, and some hope for the overall success of the CAT Protocol.
If we set the goal to attract more developers and enrich the applications to make the CAT and Fractal ecosystems thrive, then I think UniSat’s current approach of seriously supporting developers without creating overly high market expectations is very appropriate. The rising coin prices everyone wants to see will ultimately come from the richness and prosperity of ecosystem applications. I view $CAT as the embodiment and tokenization of the entire CAT Protocol brand.
BlockBeats: After the launch of Fractal and CAT20, some voices say Dotswap is the 'biggest winner.' What do you think? In what areas will Dotswap and Fractal grow together?
Lin: We emphasize 'speed' quite a bit, just like 'First is first' on Ordinals; the same goes for product development. There may be times when our product experience lags slightly behind some competitors due to 'speed,' but we will quickly iterate thereafter. When something new like CAT20 comes out, users definitely need something usable first; whatever everyone needs, we will work hard to provide.
We are definitely inseparable from Fractal, complementing each other and growing together. Good applications will bring users to the ecosystem, and the prosperity of different types of applications within the ecosystem will benefit all types of applications. For instance, CAT20 previously lacked wallet support, and we focused on Swap. Once UniSat filled that gap, everyone could directly merge UTXO through the wallet, eliminating the constraints of transaction size on our platform.
How do you view the present and future of the Bitcoin mainnet?
The revival of OP_CAT could be one of the biggest narratives in this round of the Bitcoin ecosystem, but will it really happen in this bull market? CEXs seem to lack enthusiasm for listing Rune assets. Is it that the narrative of 'issuing coins on Bitcoin' has reached its ceiling? If OP_CAT really revives, what significant changes will it bring to the Bitcoin ecosystem? Lin shared his views on these questions with us.
BlockBeats: From BRC-20 to Runes, has the novelty of asset issuance narratives on Bitcoin, or the value of asset issuance narratives, been largely explored?
Lin: This perspective is quite interesting. Ethereum and Solana can also issue coins, and the cost of issuing coins is very low. Relying solely on the act of issuing coins as a value narrative is actually quite limited. Launching a new protocol and then issuing coins for speculation has already covered the player base over such a long time. If we want more newcomers to enter, we certainly need a new narrative, as the consensus that can be formed by simply issuing coins may have reached its limit.
CAT20 has incorporated state, smart contracts, and programmability, which are significant innovations. However, how these innovations will ultimately reflect in a narrative that users are willing to pay for still needs to be observed; we still need to think about what problems we can solve with these innovations and what benefits they can bring to users.
BlockBeats: Do you think the narrative value of issuing coins has been nearly exhausted, which is why CEXs lack interest in listing Rune assets? Or is it because the trading of Runes resembles NFTs more, and the market value before being listed on CEX hasn’t undergone sufficient liquidity testing?
Lin: I cannot draw a conclusion because the considerations and interests of CEXs are not something I can understand, but I can express some guesses about this issue personally.
CEXs have their own user groups, and they definitely need to consider whether listing a new coin can bring in more revenue and whether if they don’t list a new coin in a certain sector/concept, their user base will go to other CEXs. From these perspectives, whether everyone thinks Runes can catch the attention of CEXs is subjective. Of course, besides these angles, CEXs may have other considerations, and it's possible that these are not the reasons for their lack of enthusiasm for Runes; only the CEXs themselves know the answer.
BlockBeats: Do you think OP_CAT can successfully revive in this round of the bull market? One viewpoint is that the discussion around the revival of OP_CAT is far less than that of the block size debate back then. Perhaps we’ll only see signs of OP_CAT's revival when the community is intensely discussing it. What do you think?
Lin: This perspective may be correct. We can only prepare for various possibilities, rather than hoping that OP_CAT will definitely revive at some future point.
Whether OP_CAT can be successfully revived is a question we could ask the Bitcoin Core developers: what conditions need to be met to alleviate your concerns and gain your support for reviving OP_CAT? If there were more direct communication, I think this issue would be easier to resolve. Even if their answer is 'world peace,' it would be better than our current lack of clarity regarding their concerns.
BlockBeats: If CAT20 can achieve great success on Fractal, what impact will that have on the revival of OP_CAT on the mainnet?
Lin: I believe change starts from the demand side and absolutely not from the supply side. If OP_CAT can ultimately generate a large number of applications on Fractal, proving there is significant demand for various scenarios, the call from the Bitcoin mainnet to meet these demands will grow louder. In that case, it is actually Bitcoin that will definitely need OP_CAT; otherwise, how will Bitcoin miners continue?
Otherwise, we can only rely on the opinions of the 'Bitcoin Authority' on what Bitcoin needs or does not need. The revival of OP_CAT is not a technical issue in itself, but rather a 'political issue.'
Additionally, if CAT20 can achieve such great success on Fractal, do we still need support from the mainnet? Or rather, does success itself prove the value independence of CAT20? The lack of support from the Bitcoin mainnet will not discount the value of CAT20 or even Fractal. Of course, if the Bitcoin mainnet really supports OP_CAT one day, we would all be happy to see that.
BlockBeats: If OP_CAT is revived, what major changes will occur in the narrative of Bitcoin during this round of the bull market? What potential huge opportunities will arise?
Lin: The revival of OP_CAT is just a small step because having OP_CAT alone is still not enough for many larger ideas. However, if OP_CAT exists, a trustless cross-chain bridge might be feasible, perhaps using zk Verify or other technologies; there will be many such opportunities.
The future development of Dotswap
BlockBeats: Do you think Dotswap could become the Uniswap on Bitcoin? What is the product moat for Dotswap?
Lin: We certainly hope to become an important infrastructure of the Bitcoin ecosystem and reach the heights of Uniswap. To achieve this goal, we will always focus on improving our products and providing good services. We have also opened our API, hoping more projects can engage with us and reach cooperation.
For us, we feel that there is no such thing as a product moat, or rather, innovation is our moat. The only thing we can do is to capture and act on new opportunities as soon as they arise, to seize every chance to create products that everyone likes, continuously meet users' latest needs, and thus build our reputation and brand.
BlockBeats: What Bitcoin-specific innovations will Dotswap bring?
Lin: We are confident that we will be able to implement completely trustless swaps using the UTXO model and the multi-input, multi-output capabilities within UTXO transactions very soon. This should be a height that no competitor can achieve at the moment, and it is also a very valuable and meaningful thing for us.
BlockBeats: Dotswap now has a platform token on Runes; will you consider migrating to CAT20 or updated FT protocols in the future?
Lin: We will continue to observe the stability, development, and market response of these protocols. At this stage, constantly stirring the platform token is not a good thing; the value of the platform token lies more in doing the product itself well, helping these FT protocols in the Bitcoin ecosystem and the entire ecosystem to develop better, rather than depending on which protocol the platform token exists on.
If the migration of platform tokens can bring more benefits to our token holders, users, and even products, we will definitely do it. But no one can predict what will happen in the future; we can only say we will always consider this issue from the perspective of token holders, users, and products.
