As the Bitcoin ecosystem continues to develop, the market’s attitude towards top cryptocurrencies has become clear. Now, we are seeing competition and development in two main directions:

First is the horizontal "inscription track". Various public chains are trying inscription technology, forming an "inscription track". For example, Ethereum's eths, Dogchain's dogi, Solana's sols, etc.

The second is the vertical "BTC ecosystem", with Ordinals and BRC-20 as the pioneers, forming the first wave of traffic and wealth accumulation. Subsequently, new protocols such as Atomicals/Runes (not yet launched) will continue the funding and attention of BRC-20.

In addition, there are many BTC L2 projects and DeFi projects in the construction stage in the Bitcoin ecosystem, which have attracted more attention from developers and capital. These developments are not limited to inscription technology, but are deeply building the Bitcoin ecosystem, increasing its total locked value (TVL) and infrastructure.

SATS

SATS currently has a circulating market value of US$1.613 billion, ranking first in the Bitcoin ecosystem.

SATS is a BRC-20 token based on the Bitcoin network and a token created based on the Ordinals protocol, which was released on March 9, 2023. The name of this token comes from the smallest unit of Bitcoin, "Satoshi", which represents a tribute to Bitcoin.

SATS was originally created for entertainment purposes and was considered a meme, but gradually showed the success that a cryptocurrency community could achieve by jointly participating in and exploring blockchain technology, and thus attracted the attention of a large number of investors and traders, and became very popular in the BRC ecosystem.

At present, some key data points about SATS include: total supply is 2,100 trillion SATS; number of holding addresses: more than 37,430; total number of transactions: more than 21,425,690 times. From the on-chain data, SATS's takeover funds are very strong. Within less than a day of listing on Binance, 19.17% of the chips were rushed in, worth about 200 million US dollars, and there was no significant decline even after it had risen by 143%.

Although the amount of SATS on the trading platform is not as much as ORDI, the chips are still relatively scattered. However, a large number of early high-profit chips have not been sold. Now, 7 of the top 10 holding addresses are personal addresses, and the largest individual holds 15 trillion SATS, worth $7.2 million. The largest player in SATS once owned 65 trillion SATS, which he sold all after Binance went online, making a profit of $36 million.

STX

STX’s current market capitalization is US$1.513 billion, ranking second in the Bitcoin ecosystem.

Stacks is a Bitcoin L2 platform, and STX is its native token, which has the functions of staking, governance, ticket smart contracts and value transfer. While anchored on the Bitcoin blockchain, Stacks is also an independent protocol. It executes these contracts on the Bitcoin blockchain by introducing the smart contract language Clarity and the virtual machine SVM (Stacks Virtual Machine), and helps the Bitcoin blockchain expand through the "PoX" (Proof of Transfer) consensus mechanism, opening up new possibilities for applications such as DeFi and NFT.

In addition, Stacks has introduced sBTC, which is pegged to Bitcoin. It defines a decentralized “hang-in” and “hang-out” system that allows the Stacks network to write to Bitcoin, creating a channel for decentralized communication and stronger security, thereby transplanting Bitcoin into a system with higher practicality. A key difference between sBTC and wBTC is that the latter is operated by a custodial entity, while Stacks claims that sBTC operates entirely on its own and is protected by the security infrastructure of both systems.

ORDI

ORDI's current market capitalization is US$1.376 billion, ranking third in the Bitcoin ecosystem.

On March 8, 2023, anonymous developer @domodata launched the BRC-20 inscription protocol based on the Ordinals protocol and deployed the experimental token ORDI, which was the first BRC 20 Token to be deployed.

On March 9, ORDI was minted. The cost of minting one ORDI (1 piece includes 1,000 coins) is between $2 and $3. Based on the current price of $50 per ORDI, the current price of one piece is $50,000. Since then, the value of ORDI has continued to rise, especially after being listed on Binance, its price once soared by more than 700%.

Ten months later, if you haven’t sold it yet, based on the current price, this is a 20,000-fold increase in investment. As of writing, ORDI is priced at $54 per unit, with a market value of about $1 billion.

RATS

RATS currently has a circulating market value of US$370 million, ranking fourth in the Bitcoin ecosystem.

RATS is a BRC-20 token created through the Ordinals protocol, a unique rat-inspired meme token that represents one of the most prolific mammals on Earth. Unlike many tokens that aim to achieve significant success in the blockchain ecosystem or the crypto asset market as a whole, RATS is a meme token created for entertainment purposes.

The success of meme tokens often happens when people come together to have fun and explore blockchain technology, so RATS’ success is largely due to the passion of its community. RATS has become a symbol of this spirit, with a growing group of supporters.

The token economics of RATS will begin rolling out on March 11, 2023, and will be fully circulated on November 5, 2023. According to CoinMarketCap, the total token supply of RATS is 1 trillion tokens, but there is currently no clarity regarding the allocation and distribution of RATS tokens.

ATOM

ATOM’s current circulating market value is US$283 million, ranking fifth in the Bitcoin ecosystem.

ATOM is a token based on the ARC-20 standard of the Bitcoin blockchain and belongs to the Atomicals protocol. The Atomicals protocol is a mechanism for creating, transferring, and updating NFTs on the UTXO (Unspent Transaction Output) blockchain.

The protocol solves the long-standing problem of representing arbitrary fungible token assets on the Bitcoin blockchain by permanently tying each token unit to one Satoshi. This means that each ATOM token will never be worth less than 1 Satoshi. ARC-20 tokens can be minted by anyone and transferred to any Bitcoin address. The ARC-20 token standard uses Satoshi to represent units of ownership, ensuring that the token has a minimum value of 1 Satoshi.

According to data from Atomicals Market on December 14, the Atomicals ecosystem has generally risen:

ATOM is currently priced at $14.46, with a 24-hour increase of 38.36%.

DMINT is currently priced at $0.12, with a 24-hour increase of 5.19%;

BITVM is currently priced at $0.03, with a 24-hour increase of 15.38%;

REALM is currently priced at $0.9, with a 24-hour increase of 24.29%;

AVM is currently priced at $0.34, with a 24-hour increase of 73.35%;

THE BAD

MUBI’s current market capitalization is $215 million, ranking sixth in the Bitcoin ecosystem.

MUBI is a BRC-20 token based on the Bitcoin blockchain of the two-way bridge platform Multibit. Multibit completed IDO on November 14, and the token MUBI rose by 1140% after opening.

The Multibit platform is designed to facilitate users to seamlessly transfer tokens between the Bitcoin blockchain and other Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) networks, thereby enhancing liquidity and interoperability between different blockchain networks. The MUBI token provides a new method that allows users to smoothly transfer tokens between the Bitcoin and EVM networks, promoting seamless flow and interoperability of tokens between different blockchain ecosystems.

Multibit has seen significant price growth over the past 24 hours, rising by 50.40%. There are currently 950 million MUBI tokens in circulation, and the total supply is capped at 1 billion MUBI tokens.

ALEX

ALEX currently has a circulating market value of US$205 million, ranking 7th in the Bitcoin ecosystem.

ALEX is a Bitcoin DeFi platform based on the Stacks blockchain, dedicated to activating the multiple uses of Bitcoin. ALEX mainly provides the following services: projects launch their tokens, fixed-rating and fixed-term lending without liquidation risk, AMM mechanism DEX, deposit tokens to earn interest and get high returns through yield farming.

ALEX aims to break the barriers between Bitcoin Layer 1 (L1) and Layer 2 (L2) to provide a seamless Bitcoin DeFi experience. Its native token ALEX can be obtained through DEX, LP participation and staking, and has three main functions: incentives, staking, and voting.

The total initial supply of ALEX tokens is 100 million, with the foundation accounting for 20%, the community staking accounting for 50%, and the founding team and early investors accounting for 30%. 50% of the initial supply is used for staking, the main purpose of which is to incentivize users to participate in platform activities, especially to provide liquidity and staking on DEX.

RIF

RIF’s current market capitalization is $131 million, ranking 8th in the Bitcoin ecosystem.

RIF tokens are the native tokens of the Rootstock Infrastructure Framework, a service layer built on top of the Rootstock blockchain. Rootstock is a long-standing sidechain on which Uniswap v3 is deployed. Rootstock Labs developed and launched the Bitcoin sidechain RSK in January 2018. It is an EVM-compatible smart contract platform written in Solidity, using Bitcoin as its native asset, and aims to give BTC programmability.

On top of this, RSK's parent company IOV Labs has established the RIF (RSK Infrastructure Framework) laboratory, which aims to help RSK achieve wider interoperability and faster deployment time, bridging the gap between blockchain technology and its large-scale market adoption. Currently, the laboratory has developed an open operating system RIFOS and a series of suites (wallets, relays, domain name services, etc.) based on RSK.

As of now, the circulating supply of RIF is 1 billion, and the maximum supply is not yet clear. RIF is designed to bridge the gap between complex blockchain technology and seamless user experience, help organizations create innovative DeFi products, and provide infrastructure and resources to solve key user accessibility challenges.

PIPE

PIPE’s current circulating market value is US$126 million, ranking 9th in the Bitcoin ecosystem.

The PIPE protocol is a protocol inspired by Casey Rodarmor's RUNES and Ordinals' BRC-20 concepts, and its first token is also named PIPE. It contains three "functions": deployment, minting, and transfer. "Deployment" indicates that the new token has been deployed, while "minting" allows liquidity to be re-cast from the token according to the deployed rules (such as supply, restrictions), bringing more advanced functions to ordinals.

The Pipe protocol is based on the UTXO architecture and introduces advanced features of digital art and NFTs to the Bitcoin world. It perfectly inherits the characteristics of Bitcoin UTXO, while optimizing network congestion, improving mint/handling fees and transfer experience. Although the data of Pipe and ordinals are both stored on the Bitcoin chain, they are stored in different locations, just like the coins and banknotes in the wallet are not in the same place. This design purpose allows users to enjoy more excitement and fun.

TRAC

TRAC’s current circulating market value is US$109 million, ranking 10th in the Bitcoin ecosystem.

TRAC (Ordinals) is a token based on the BRC-20 standard. The market performance of TRAC (Ordinals) has recently shown an upward trend. As of now, the real-time price of TRAC is $5.12, a 24-hour increase of 32%, and the trading volume is $2.98 million, an increase of 20.80%. The maximum supply of TRAC is 21 million, and the circulating supply is unclear.

TRAC is currently available for trading on Gate.io, BitMart and AscendEX (BitMax). $$trac$$

STAMPS

The current market capitalization of STAMPS is US$68 million, ranking 11th in the Bitcoin ecosystem.

SRC-20 tokens, also known as STAMPS (Secure Tradeable Art Maintained Securely), are a new type of token on the Bitcoin blockchain. Created by anonymous developer Mike In Space!, BTC Stamps was inspired by protocols such as Ordinals and Counterparty and proposed a method of embedding data into the Bitcoin blockchain that is different from inscription technology.

STAMPS tokens guarantee greater permanence than other protocols because they are stored directly in disposable transaction outputs on the blockchain, making them impossible to delete. The proposed use of STAMPS is to create fractional NFTs for lightweight "24×24 pixel, 8 color depth PNG or GIF" images, which constitute a complete NFT and can be sold in different parts depending on the size of the image.

According to the Github information submitted by it, the implementation mechanism of BTC Stamps is to embed the image data in base 64 format into the transaction output on the Bitcoin chain, thereby permanently saving the corresponding image data on the Bitcoin chain.