Interview with UniSat: "Astronomical valuation" rumors, a small team of 10 people is the new leader of the Bitcoin track

After Ordinals came out, it actually went through a two-month dormant period. Except for Twelvefold, which Yuga Labs personally promoted, there was not much discussion. At that time, no one was optimistic about the concept of "Bitcoin inscriptions". The general view was: Bitcoin can be used for payment, and it is not necessary and should not be used as an ecology. After the launch of BRC-20, many "regular army players" even sneered at this "parody of ERC-20", because there is an essential difference between a simple string of JSON codes and a smart contract.

However, BlockBeats found that there is still a small group of people who try their best to create transactions and build a market for Bitcoin NFT when no one cares about it. In March, we contacted some participants in the Bitcoin NFT ecosystem, including Bzz, the OTC transaction guarantor of BRC-20, PixelBirds Sparrow, the Bitcoin NFT project party, and UniSat, a plug-in wallet that is integrating BRC-20. In March, picture NFT was obviously more popular than BRC, occupying the bulk of Bitcoin inscription casting. BAYC, Punk and other Ethereum blue-chip NFTs were put on the Bitcoin network, especially after Magic Eden ran into the field.

In early April, BlockBeats participated in the offline Meet Up of the Ordinals community in Hong Kong. At the event, the developers of Magic Eden and OrdSwap talked about the unlimited potential of the Bitcoin NFT market in the future. Although there were not many people at the venue, the atmosphere was very lively. However, at the scene, people did not see UniSat. When everyone was excited about the Bitcoin image NFT, UniSat was busy with the integration of BRC-20.

As a wallet software, UniSat, which developed BRC-20, seems to have become a "heterogeneous" in the new ecology. After all, there is at least some back-and-forth debate about whether to put small pictures on the Bitcoin network, but when it comes to BRC-20, everyone seems to be unanimously treating it as a joke, let alone Engage in integration and development for it. The "everyone" here also includes many super early participants of BRC-20. For example, there is not even a single $nals in the wallet address of the deployer of the $nals of "Hundred Times Coin". And because there were no players, many participants gave away a lot of $ordi as gifts to attract them to enter. In hindsight, there were very few players who were really determined to join BRC in the early days, and UniSat was the first batch.

Labor Day in May completely changed the landscape of the Bitcoin NFT ecosystem. From April 28th, the news of "$ordi per capita thousand times" spread in various WeChat groups, and in the following days, opportunities for ten times coins and hundred times coins such as $nals, $UTXO, and $elon appeared successively. A large number of users FOMO entered the BRC market, and the WeChat groups related to BRC-20, from one group to eight groups, were all full in less than an afternoon. As the only on-chain entry and exit for buying and selling BRC tokens, UniSat has become a name that is being discussed in the entire currency circle. Perhaps even the team did not expect that the Bitcoin network would be blocked because of one of its own products.

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Why choose the Bitcoin Ordinals ecosystem?

BlockBeats: Thank you for accepting the interview. Please introduce Lorenzo briefly. Why did you choose to make a wallet product on Ordinals?

Lorenzo：I'm Lorenzo, an early Bitcoin ecosystem developer. We have always paid close attention to the Bitcoin ecology. When the Ordinals protocol appeared, we did in-depth research and recognized the concept of this digital artifact, so we decided to invest in development and realized a Bitcoin-native lightweight UniSat Wallet, a high-level wallet, and UniSat Search, a search tool for extremely fast queries, have also gradually won the recognition of early participants in the Ordinals community.

BlockBeats: What UniSat did at the beginning was "small picture printing", why did it later shift its development focus to the BRC-20 market? Why didn't you choose to be a trading market for Bitcoin NFT?

Lorenzo：Inscription is a basic service. When there is not so much influx of users and the overall rate is low, the experience of UniSat Inscribe is ideal. After the engraving service took shape, we noticed the definition specification document of BRC-20, and made a preliminary analysis and implementation based on this original definition. The original definition at that time was still relatively vague. While we were implementing it, we discussed and adjusted with the protocol maker domo, polishing and finalizing most of the details.

It's not that we're not interested in NFT transactions in general. At that time, the first trustless wallet interaction implementation based on PSBT was jointly completed by UniSat Wallet and OpenOrdex (Note by BlockBeats, for more information about PSBT, please read "What is a "Partially Signed Bitcoin Transaction (PSBT)"?"). At that time, we focused on running through the interaction between the wallet and the website, which also laid the foundation for our own market. Later, UniSat Marketplace's selection of BRC-20 cut-in was also verified to be a reasonable choice.

BlockBeats: For a long time, neither Ordinals nor BRC-20 received much attention. During this time, why did the team still insist on developing the BTC ecosystem?

Lorenzo：In fact, it hasn’t been a long time. Ordinals has only been online for three months. Those who are familiar with us along the way know that we have been working hard and delivered a series of products non-stop. We didn’t feel this “low tide” at all. . On the contrary, when there is not much attention from the outside world, there are still many new ideas emerging in the community. BRC-20 is just one of them, and some innovations have not come out. This is also very reasonable for a rapidly developing community.

BlockBeats: What is the most difficult part of developing the BRC-20 transaction process? What is the key to making the transaction "smoother"?

Lorenzo：The hardest part is the design trade-offs. We finally chose the transaction form of pending sell order. Many people don't understand why they don't abandon the form of inscriptions on the interface and choose a way of presentation like DEX. This is because we hope that new users can be brought into and understand the way of thinking of Ordinals intuitively step by step through exposure to UniSat products, instead of "changing the place and playing the mature gameplay of other chains again". Doing that doesn't necessarily achieve a native experience, nor does it necessarily conform to the characteristics of Ordinals. So we took a risk and chose native inscription presentation. From here, you can see that UniSat cares a lot about Ordinals native.

As for "smoother", I'm sorry, our market has not yet achieved it. Before the BRC-20 transaction, all the features provided by UniSat, from UniSat Inscribe to UniSat Search to UniSat Wallet, do not require block confirmation, which can indeed be called "silky". Therefore, it is natural that we hope that BRC-20 transactions will also be a smooth experience without confirmation, and we have done a lot of verification work for this, but unfortunately, there are still major problems in this area after going online. The attacker uses a special The structure achieved the purpose of forgery (BlockBeats note, UniSat Wallet suffered a large number of double-spending attacks on April 24, and the team compensated users afterwards). So in the later updates, we chose to sacrifice part of the experience to ensure full security, and similar problems did not reappear later.

BlockBeats: Many people believe that BRC-20 transactions rely heavily on centralized project parties to maintain. What do you think of this point of view? How is UniSat going to solve the decentralization problem?

Lorenzo：As we all know, Bitcoin currently lacks perfect smart contract support, and BRC-20 transactions are indeed decentralized. In UniSat Marketplace, we use the relatively mature PSBT technology to realize trustless transactions (Note by BlockBeats, for more information about PSBT transactions, please read "The founder of Ordinals refuted the Yuga Labs auction, why is PSBT the correct solution for Bitcoin NFT transactions?"). The assets of both parties to the transaction are exchanged in a tx without platform participation, and it is essentially point-to-point, which is similar to the existing Ordinals market transactions.

UniSat Wallet is a non-custodial wallet similar to MetaMask. Your mnemonic is stored independently and no one else can access it. Later, Marketplace was launched to interact with the wallet in a standard way. The seller's wallet signed to provide a sell order, and the buyer signed to place an order to complete the purchase. This is a completely decentralized transaction. The platform cannot intervene in the transaction process, which is essentially a peer-to-peer behavior between the two parties of the transaction, so it is a safe transaction method.

However, accusations of BRC-20 centralization do have merit. At present, only UniSat provides a relatively complete commercial index, that is to say, whether a transaction is actually valid depends heavily on the correctness and completeness of the index. Since the UniSat Indexer (BRC-20) was born, we have eliminated all kinds of ambiguities in the communication with the initiator domo, and achieved strong completeness.

Of course, in special cases, there may still be some "Corner Cases" that cannot be accurately covered by the document. At present, everything that has arisen has been resolved. Until the afternoon of May 10th at the latest, an invalid Mint case was processed due to mixed case of JSON field names.

For now, UniSat can probably proudly claim that there are no known issues with the index.

BlockBeats: Most users generally report that the UniSat wallet and webpage are very laggy. What optimization work is the team currently doing?

Lorenzo：first level title

About market share, handling fee and index open source

BlockBeats: It is said that UniSat has more than 90% market share in the inscription and BRC-20 market?

Lorenzo：This should not have such a large ratio. Maybe our product iteration is relatively fast, and there are some small first-mover advantages. Soon, with the open source of the index, the centralized trading platform will occupy a considerable share. Ordinals has only been born for 3 months, and everyone is on the same starting line. For Bitcoin, which has been born for more than ten years, this is a marathon, and it is just getting started. We have enough patience and solid infrastructure to support our subsequent continuous efforts.

BlockBeats: Many users have reported that UniSat’s handling fee is not low. The current income of the team should be considerable, right?

Lorenzo：We have done rigorous market research, and the 1.6% handling fee is actually very low. UniSat Marketplace is a primary and a half market, which cannot be compared with CEX or DEX transactions. A very big shortcoming is insufficient liquidity. If the handling fee is too low, there will be false knock-on orders. We are a decentralized Market and will not intervene in the market, but user safety and responsibility to users have always been given top priority.

Therefore, taking into account the 1.6% handling fee, it is more based on the protection of users. BRC-20 is also an inscription, so you can understand that what we provide is an inscription NFT transaction. We all know that the transaction fee in the NFT market is basically around 2.5%, and even a 2 to 5% royalty is added .

The starting point for the design of the deployment royalties is very simple. It hopes to motivate the Deployer to participate in the operation and become an active and effective network node. The benefit to the deployer is indeed to stimulate everyone's enthusiasm for participation. However, recently we have also continued to hear users objecting to the design of the royalty, saying that the deployer is just preoccupied with a good name. Such an opinion is not unreasonable.

Lorenzo：The starting point for the design of the deployment royalties is very simple. It hopes to motivate the Deployer to participate in the operation and become an active and effective network node. The benefit to the deployer is indeed to stimulate everyone's enthusiasm for participation. However, recently we have also continued to hear users objecting to the design of the royalty, saying that the deployer is just preoccupied with a good name. Such an opinion is not unreasonable.

We are currently considering canceling the design of mandatory royalties on the platform. For users, this will directly reduce transaction costs; In a service fee, the same proportion (0.2%) as the previous royalties will be used for a Deployer Incentive Program (Deployer Incentive Program), and an additional 0.2% of the service fee income will be used to motivate stable and continuous Contributed Deployer. Please pay attention to our follow-up updates.

BlockBeats: Why did you decide to open source the UniSat index parsing code? Will this allow exchanges to access BRC-20 Token faster and have an impact on UniSat's trading volume?

Lorenzo：The analysis of the index is a very important part of the entire ecology. If we don’t open it up, others will definitely be able to develop it. It’s nothing more than a matter of earlier and later. But if we open it up in time, we can let all developers have a default reference, and they can easily verify "UniSat's code logic is determined in this way" at any time as soon as possible. Copying can save everyone's time and eliminate potential differences to the greatest extent.

We understand and support the exchange's desire to launch BRC-20 as soon as possible. This is not just lip service, we try our best to provide real technical support for various exchanges in terms of documents, API and data, even if it means that our development time and resources are all wasted during this period. crowding out. We hope that these CEXs will go online as soon as possible. On the one hand, it is the greatest affirmation of UniSat as an infrastructure. On the other hand, it will actually let more new users know about BRC-20, understand Bitcoin Ordinals and join them. This is A real win-win.

first level title

Rumors about financing and acquisitions

BlockBeats: There have been rumors in the community recently that a big exchange wants to acquire UniSat?

Lorenzo：There are indeed trading platforms contacting us now. Not to mention the acquisition, we are still very small, more technical exchanges and cooperation. BRC-20 is a new bookkeeping method, and the exchange's support for BRC-20 requires independent technical implementation. We have open-sourced the BRC-20 index, and will launch an open-source public analytical index, which can be cross-validated with the exchange's index. This can always provide reliable BRC-20 ledger analysis, which is the key to the development of the entire ecosystem. UniSat is very pleased to continue to contribute to the Ordinals ecosystem, the standardization of BRC-20.

In particular, OKX has had in-depth technical communication with us during the communication. It can be seen that they have invested in the research and development of BRC-20 from a very early stage, providing us with public index and cross-validation Lots of useful ideas.

BlockBeats: Will the team consider financing in the near future?

Lorenzo：We are indeed in contact at present, and there will be financial consultants to help us with the overall planning later.

BlockBeats: If the BRC-20 boom subsides, how does UniSat think about the future direction of development?

Lorenzo：Of course, the BRC-20 craze may fade, but it may come back at any time unexpectedly. This trend has already formed, and Bitcoin is always ready for the next outbreak. UniSat will improve the user's experience across the platform, securely save the user's inscription in the wallet, improve the access experience of mobile phone users, and optimize the casting process. In addition, we still have new products under test, so we won't disclose them here.

BlockBeats: There is still resistance to Chinese teams in the Web3 field, what do you think?

Lorenzo：Our positioning from the very beginning is to serve global users, and we can understand users' concerns, especially in the case of the recent surge in users and extreme network congestion, our services have encountered many problems that cannot be responded and processed in a timely manner, including After the casting transaction is submitted, it cannot enter the memory pool, and it cannot be packaged in time after entering the memory pool. After purchasing the BRC-20, the payment cannot be confirmed after a delay, and so on. The existence of these problems is indeed due to our limited ability, and we have not done things well enough in the case of a sharp increase in the number of users. It has nothing to do with where the team base is.

Among these problems, some we can solve or alleviate, and some are due to the limitations of the current Bitcoin network. I hope users can understand. On the other hand, this also shows that our adaptation to the Bitcoin network is not enough, and the system cannot effectively deal with extreme congestion. These are things we need to improve. We will learn from this lesson, and when the next wave comes, you may find that regardless of the congestion on the chain, UniSat will evolve well, as it has always done.

BlockBeats: Indeed, the BRC-20 boom has been dominated by Chinese people from the very beginning, and users also need to reduce irrational discrimination. Finally, I wish Lorenzo to lead the team to expand the Ordinals ecosystem. Thank you for accepting our interview.

Lorenzo：Thank you for your understanding and support to us, thank you very much.