OKX will establish the Bitcoin BRC-20 industry standard with Unisat
OKX and Unisat, the open source Chrome wallet extension for Bitcoin Ordinals, announced on Friday that they entered into a cooperation to establish a BRC-20 token standard. BRC-20 and Ordinals have been a popular topic in recent weeks and the reason behind the division in the Bitcoin community.
OKX and UniSat establish the BRC-20 Token Standard
Cryptocurrency exchange OKX partnered with UniSat Wallet to create a cross-verification process for BRC-20 transaction indexing on the Bitcoin blockchain. As part of the partnership, UniSat is set to become OKX’s BRC-20 market data provider.
“We are pleased to announce that @OKX and @unisat_wallet are collaborating to develop a cross-verification process for BRC-20 transaction indexing on the #Bitcoin blockchain. This marks the first step towards decentralized indexing, and improves the overall robustness and reliability of the BRC- 20.
– UniSat wallet wrote in the Twitter announcement.
BRC-20 refers to an experimental token standard introduced in March 2023 by an anonymous crypto developer known as “Domo”. Similar to ERC-20 standards on Ethereum, BRC-20 allows users to issue fungible tokens using Bitcoin’s Ordinals protocol.
Since the standard was rolled out, demand for Bitcoin Ordinals has skyrocketed, causing congestion on the world’s largest blockchain and driving network fees to a 2-year high earlier this month. In addition, Binance said on May 9 that it would add support for Bitcoin Ordinal subscriptions to its non-fungible token (NFT) marketplace in late May.
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Bitcoin Purists Strike Against BRC-20 Launch
A large part of the Bitcoin community welcomed the introduction of the BRC-20 standard, as many wanted to join Ethereum followers in issuing NFTs on their favorite blockchain. On the other hand, some have loudly criticized this idea.
These include the so-called Bitcoin purists, who believe that Ordinal inscriptions enabled by the BRC-20 standard represent a departure from the original intent of Bitcoin, which was primarily intended to be used as a medium of exchange and a decentralized store of value. Moreover, purists also believe that Ordinals have added elements of centralization and jeopardized the idea that Bitcoin is a decentralized, value-neutral currency.
As a result of their discontent, some Bitcoin developers have proposed canceling Ordinals and BRC-20 tokens, which have been primarily responsible for the recent network bottleneck and mounting fees. Earlier this week, around 400,000 unconfirmed Bitcoin transactions were waiting in the mempool to be added to a block.
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About the author
Tim Fries is the co-founder of The Tokenist. He has a B. Sc. in mechanical engineering from the University of Michigan, and an MBA from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. Tim served as a Senior Associate in the investment team at RW Baird’s US Private Equity division and is also a co-founder of Protective Technologies Capital, an investment firm specializing in sensing, protection and control solutions.
