From wallets to Bitcoin L2, and then to blockchain games, what is Unisat’s ambition?

Author: Jessy Golden Finance

The market is bleak, and the performance of the relevant market of Bitcoin ecology is not satisfactory. The low price of currency is a good time to rethink the current situation and future of Bitcoin ecological development.

Recently, Inscription Sats has tripled from the recent lowest point, which is a rare bright spot in the sluggish market. The reason behind its counter-trend is because of the empowerment of the Unisat team, which stated that it will use it as the gas fee for its Swap product.

Unisat is a project that is difficult to bypass in the Bitcoin ecological niche. After the explosion of inscriptions, it quickly launched a platform for inscription deployment, casting, and trading, as well as a Bitcoin wallet, which simplified the process of everyone participating in the inscription ecology. It became famous in one battle, and also laid the foundation for Unisat to establish its status in the Bitcoin ecosystem.

In September, Fractal, the second layer of Bitcoin made by Unisat, will be launched on the mainnet. Today, Unisat is no longer just a wallet company or a Swap. Unisat has invested in, done it itself, or openly supported many projects in the Bitcoin ecosystem.

These projects include Bitcoin second-layer expansion solutions, Bitcoin chain games, developer services, etc.

Today's UniSat has evolved from an open source wallet to an engraving service, to a protocol contributor, to a developer service, to an infrastructure provider, and now to a Bitcoin expansion solution implementer. Has he done enough? In the development of the Bitcoin ecosystem, can what he has done become an industry template? And what is Unisat's real ambition?

Bitcoin big block supporters, accumulating in the BSV ecosystem and using inscriptions

Data shows that since its launch, more than 50% of inscriptions have been created by UniSat Inscribe, and more than 80% of BRC-20 have been traded on the UniSat market.  

At first, Unisat was an open source wallet for Bitcoin. It was well known because of the popularity of inscriptions. As a wallet, it was widely used by users with tools such as minting and trading. At that time, Unisat was not the only one doing similar things, but Unisat won the battle.

The core point is that the team itself has a lot of experience in developing Bitcoin big blocks. This enabled them to continuously iterate products and quickly respond to market needs at the time.

Counting what Unisat did during the first spring of Inscription, we can see that the team kept up with the needs of the market. In February 2023, the wallet and Inscribe were launched, the search function was launched in March, and the market and rune support of the product were optimized in April...

It is understood that the team members of Unisat are supporters of the Bitcoin big block. They participated in the Bitcoin fork that year, and have been involved in the development of BSV since then.

In the industry, a product that directly faces user needs needs to bear huge pressure on the product technology level. In the first spring of Inscription, Unisat was able to stand out quickly, thanks to the accumulation of relatively long-term relevant development experience. Accumulate strength and seize opportunities. The right time, right place and right people are all indispensable. From this point of view, Unisat is lucky.

After standing firm in the Bitcoin ecosystem, what Unisat needs to think about is actually how to survive for a long time, or even how to make the Bitcoin ecosystem bigger so that it can enjoy the dividends of this track for a long time. While making the cake bigger, another very important point is how to consolidate the position of "Big Brother"?

Combing what Unisat has done in more than a year, it will be found that Unisat's main task is to optimize its original products and keep up with the needs of users in line with the development of the Bitcoin ecosystem.

Several important time nodes are as follows:

In October 2023, UniSat Wallet successfully launched its BRC-20-swap mainnet, which is an AMM-based Dex. The difference from other Dex is that it only trades BRC-20 tokens. The BRC-20 swap mainnet enables users to seamlessly exchange BRC-20 tokens on Bitcoin, instead of having to trade in an order book mode on a centralized third-party platform.

brc20-swap's greatest significance to the Bitcoin ecosystem is the injection of liquidity, allowing more money to flow in and more convenient transactions.

Based on this success, UniSat subsequently launched UniSat Developer Services. They hope to use a series of developer tools to help developers develop in the Bitcoin ecosystem and make the pie bigger together.

Unisat's influence in the industry has indeed grown little by little. A very significant performance is that in January 2024, UniSat proposed the BRC-20 protocol fork "Jubilee" update, the goal of which is to make BRC-20 work properly by changing the rules of the Ordinals protocol.

Unisat's insistence on following Ordinals' upgrade was opposed and criticized by Domo, the founder of BRC20. The criticism and struggle between the two is actually a fight for control of the BRC-20 protocol.

In this matter, each has its own insistence, and in the end, the camp represented by Domo won, and Unisat gave up its upgrade plan. However, this debate in the Bitcoin ecosystem also indicates that Unisat has already had a heavyweight influence in the ecosystem.

At the step of Brc-20 swap, Unisat's position in the Bitcoin ecosystem can basically be positioned as Uniswap on Ethereum, and more details and even actions later also show Unisat's ambition, and it is not just a trading tool for the Bitcoin ecosystem.

Unisat's ultimate ideal is in games

Unisat currently has three main lines of development. One is to provide products and services for transactions in the Bitcoin ecosystem, such as the wallet, inscription market, and even the subsequent BRC-20swap, which are all part of this line. It is also the foundation of its foothold in the industry

The second line is Bitcoin's second layer, and the third line is games.

In terms of the second layer, Unisat has made a Fractal, which uses the Pow consensus mechanism, and more than 50% of the tokens are produced by mining. The main network will be launched in September.

The difference from other Bitcoin second layers is that Fractal is currently the only native Bitcoin expansion solution, using the Bitcoin Core code, which is highly consistent with Bitcoin. For users, the experience of using this feature is as follows: the address format is the same as the main network address, and the original wallet, tools, and mining machines are used. This creates a more convenient way of use.

Fractal actually builds a foundation and a highway for what Unisat wants to do more. In an interview with the media, Lorenzo, the founder of Unisat, said that there are three main types of applications related to Fractal: the first type is the bridge, which is an application that helps assets flow between the Bitcoin main network and the Fractal main network. The second type is transaction-related, such as native Swap, DEX, NFT Marketplace, etc. The third type may be those that have been suppressed on the Bitcoin layer due to the limited block size, such as DID applications, certificate issuance applications, voting governance applications, etc. This type of application is for frequent participation and interaction of a large number of users.

The third main line of Unisat's development is actually on this third type of application, and it is more subdivided, that is, games.

UniWorlds is a Bitcoin chain game infrastructure provider invested by Unisat. Not only does Unisat invest in chain game infrastructure, but it also invests in several specific Bitcoin chain games, including the chain game OrdzGames, the world's first GameFi+DEPIN game device Bitboy, etc.

Unisat's Bitcoin chain game sounds like it has nothing to do with its previous business, and it seems that it is because Unisat wants to create a Bitcoin ecological universe. But the more fundamental reason may be that games are the ultimate dream of the founder Lorenzo.

Awakening Capital, which invested in Unisat, commented on Lorenzo: a typical technical geek, who used to have a gaming background. Lorenzo once told Awakening Capital that his ultimate ideal in life is to make a game that 8 billion people around the world can play online at the same time, and only the Bitcoin network can support this dream.

Lorenzo's ultimate goal is still games, which is why Unisat invests in and incubates games.

Analyzing Unisat's business direction, we can also find that Unisat is catering to market needs by making wallets, markets, and even Swaps, and the former two are actions that stand at the forefront. When Swap was born, the waves of the Bitcoin ecosystem had actually slowed down a lot. When it came to building the second layer and games, Unisat was not only limited to building roads and bridges, it also wanted to introduce massive traffic into the Bitcoin ecosystem. In Unisat's view, blockchain games and Bitcoin ecosystems may complement each other.

Today, as an observer, we can clearly see the development of Unisat's ambitions in the Bitcoin ecosystem and even touch its future. For the people on the Unisat team, the fact that they can be seen by the industry today is the result of their years of practical accumulation and belief in the Bitcoin block. For this reason, it missed the last bull market, but also reaped the rewards in this bull market.

Now that the Bitcoin ecosystem is in a downturn, it is also a good time to do things in a down-to-earth manner.