I have researched Fractal @fractal_bitcoin in the early stage, participated in one of their public Google meeting, and briefly introduced this network afterwards. As time goes by, Fractal has been publicly tested, and I have seen more and more people discussing and researching Fractal, so I wrote this article to explain my views on Fractal.
1. What do you think of Fractal?
Looking at this issue from different perspectives, Fractal has different views.
1️⃣Lorenzo’s positioning of Fractal
From this description we can see:
Fractal is positioned as an extension of Bitcoin, which includes four aspects: compatibility, parallelism, combination and extensibility.
In fact, Fractal has done/will do a lot of expansions based on the built-in Bitcoin core, such as mining mode, block interval, introduction of more opcodes, Taproot-VM, isolation mode, native asset cross-connection, etc., so it is appropriate to position it as an expansion.
The clever thing about this positioning is that it only mentions what needs to be done and what can be done, and does not use concepts to frame Fractal in categories such as "L2" or "side chain". This will reduce a lot of unnecessary debate in the future and also provide more possible explanations for future routes.
Of course, most people are not necessarily interested in the technical details. What they may see are "faster block time", "POW mining", "OP_CAT", etc. However, I suggest not using "L1/L2" to describe Fractal. "POW network based on Bitcoin expansion" may be a good summary.
2️⃣Investors’ views on Fractal
The development of the BTC ecosystem has proven to be a big narrative, and investors (especially those with an Eastern background) will position Fractal as an important target in this narrative, especially after the EVM-compatible L2 was not well received. This will be an extremely important project based on the expansion of the native BTC solution.
3️⃣My Positioning of Fractal
In my opinion, I would emphasize more on the "role of Bitcoin's pioneer network." This is certainly not comprehensive, but I consider it based on the idea of Bitcoin as the base chain, and I value the impact of Fractal on Bitcoin more.
Why do we emphasize "first network"? The reasons are:
1) Bitcoin Core is very conservative in its discussion on scalability. I can understand its security considerations, but I hope that such discussions can be widely allowed. Only in this way can the Bitcoin network continue to develop over time, and Fractal has the potential to do this. At least it has aroused widespread discussion in the Chinese community and can serve as a good pilot.
2) The traditional signet network can also test some new functions, but because it is a test network, it is difficult to get widespread attention. In many cases, it is just an experiment and not serious. Although Liquid has also made improvements, it is also conservative in its introduction. As a commercial project that attracts investors and users, Fractal will greatly promote the extensive exploration and thinking of new functions. These explorations will be more rigorous and more likely to be implemented.
3) This exploration in Fractal will accumulate technical experience for the future expansion of the Bitcoin network and cultivate new Bitcoin developers; when the expansion of Bitcoin can be advanced to a certain extent, these technologies can be directly transferred over.
When I reviewed Vitalik’s article on the “big and small blocks” debate, he proposed that “big blocks have natural correctness, but ultimately failed due to lack of excellent technical execution capabilities.” The first part may not be correct, but the second part did impress me, so I hope that there will be more senior developers expanding on Bitcoin, thereby changing some of the current status quo.
4️⃣Fractal and BSV
Some people compare Fractal to the BSV network, but I think the two are quite different.
On the one hand, Fractal still retains the core principles of Bitcoin core as much as possible and expands it in an acceptable form as much as possible; on the other hand, compared to developing on the old chain, developing a new chain can require more thinking and less "burden".
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Overall, I am optimistic about Fractal's prospects, and I will choose the "right way" to participate.
2. Problems that Fractal needs to solve
In my continuous observation, Fractal also faces some problems that need to be solved, mainly in the three aspects of "route", "transparency" and "ecological services".
1️⃣Route: It is difficult for us to clearly see Fractal’s development roadmap, nor can we know everything Fractal wants to do, which makes it difficult to fully understand this network.
2️⃣ Transparency: I think there are certain problems with information transparency. For example, during the testing period, there has been no clear documentation on "mining", who is mining, and where are the test coins? When I test it, sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't, which has caused the price of $FB to start to rise in the off-site test. I don't think it is very good.
3️⃣ Ecological services: I chatted with some devs who want to do projects on Fractal and learned that the current help for the projects is not in place, and the communication with the support team is not particularly smooth. At the same time, there is no "ecological fund" for ecological projects like in general public chains. All ecological project parties take the initiative to connect with them, and there is no expectation of ecological support. Given the difficulty of developing on BTC-like platforms, some developers will be discouraged.
Of course, considering the many uncertainties in Fractal’s current development and the fact that it is currently a testnet product, it is understandable that the official does not have the energy or focus on these aspects. They are just speaking out about the problems they have seen, hoping to see improvements in the future development of its network.
