1. Introduction

Welcome to the Ryze Up segment brought to you by Ryze Labs. Ryze Labs is a bridge connecting the East and the West, aiming to accelerate the development of Web3 in emerging markets and make an impact on the global Web3 world. Local Insights, Global Impact. Let's embark on this journey together. It's time to Ryze Up.

Ryze Labs has previously invested in high-growth potential projects such as Polygon, Sui, Solana, LayerZero, and Wintermute.

This episode's host: Joven, the Director of Business Development at Ryze Labs, focusing on expanding the fund's influence in the global developer community and providing strategic guidance to portfolio companies.

Special guest: Jeff, the Founder of Bitmap tech. Bitmap tech is dedicated to creating new asset protocols and scalability solutions within the Bitcoin ecosystem, including the BRC 420 asset protocol, Bitcoin Layer 2 Merlin Chain, the Bitmap.Game metaverse project, and the Recursiverse recursive protocol.

2. Attracted by the DMT Theory and Decided to Build Bitmap Tech

Before founding Bitmap tech, Jeff had been an entrepreneur in the Web2 industry for over a decade. Although he had always kept an eye on the blockchain industry, he wasn't convinced to venture into the Web3 field. After seeing Ordinals and the BTC ecosystem in 2023, he decided to start building the entire Bitcoin ecosystem in June 2023, when there was still bias against inscriptions in the market.

About Bitmap tech and BitThe relationship between map is often confusing for many people. In fact, Bitmap is the invention of Blockamoto, and Bitmap tech is the developer on Bitmap. At that time, the construction on Bitmap was also attracted by the DMT (Digital Meta theory) theory. All content is digitally generated, and each block can correspond to an avatar, a song, or a small world. The data is stored permanently and cannot be tampered with. Bitmap is the most exciting asset related to this concept, so it was chosen for construction. 3. The core advantages of BRC 420 The BRC 420 protocol launched by the Bitmap tech team is a very obscure asset type in theory, but it is very cool in practice and in products. There are two core advantages: The first advantage is that compared to NFTs stored on centralized cloud servers like Amazon Cloud and Alibaba Cloud in Ethereum, BRC 420 assets can be stored on the chain, which enables tamper-proof and permanent storage of content. The second advantage is the composability brought by openness and permanent existence. All innovations in the world are based on the efforts of predecessors. For example, popular games like League of Legends and CS are also based on previous ideas. If all content is engraved in inscriptions, subsequent people can refer to and create innovations based on the content in inscriptions. In summary, the core of BRC 420 is the modularization and assetization of content modules. Modularization of content means that gameplay, characters, music, etc. of a game can all be engraved as inscriptions. For example, if there are 1000 inscriptions, they become individual modules, and these modules can be combined to form a final content, which can be tokenized. After users own this token, they become shareholders of the project, have access rights to the content, and also become potential builders of the project. Therefore, BRC 420 has a very broad imagination space, whether it is music, games, or various types of things can be turned into modules, and then turned into assets, providing opportunities for entrepreneurs.

And bring developers a lot of space.

4. Pandora, BRC 420, and Bitmap's duality in graphics coins

Regarding the duality of graphics coins in Pandora's ERC 404, Jeff stated that the concept of graphics coin duality was originally proposed by the Bitmap tech team. After the proposal, many projects have been doing similar things. However, the fundamental difference between projects like BRC 420 and Pandora and ERC 404-like standards lies in the fact that ERC 404-like standards focus more on the financial dimension and increase the liquidity of coins and graphics from a financial perspective. The Bitmap tech project, on the other hand, hopes to start from the utility aspect, for example, Bitmap can serve as land in the metaverse, and having land allows for space, etc. First, focus on utility, and then satisfying the derivative needs of finance is a natural process.

The essence of Bitmap tech's previous launch of the blue box is that any asset protocol requires a first token, just like when Domo launched the BRC 20, it introduced the Ordi token. Rather than letting the market randomly issue the first token, it is better to let the team developing the protocol issue the first token themselves. Therefore, the token called BRC 420 was launched, which is commonly known as the blue box.

And because the early followers and hardcore supporters of the project have good thinking and influence abilities, they have also driven the project's rise. After the project gained popularity and the price increased, these community OGs naturally began to contribute more to the project, including explaining and spreading concepts, and so on.

After the BRC 420 protocol was launched, over 1,000 projects were born based on it, bringing unexpected innovations like blue crystals and music boxes.

5. The success of the Merlin Chain community comes from openness and transparency

The original intention of wanting to do Merlin Chain comes from the realization that many needs related to metaverse, autonomous worlds, and finance cannot be fulfilled on the Bitcoin Layer 1. Therefore, scaling Bitcoin is necessary.

Currently, most of the technical solutions on the Bitcoin Layer 2 are quite similar. The reason why Merlin does not have a public technical solution is because, due to the popularity of the chain, the team's time and energy are focused on addressing congestion on the chain and providing a better user experience. Whereas, most of the Layer 2 projects have been emphasizing the technical aspect because their mainnets have not been launched yet.

The core reason for the success of the Merlin community lies in its openness and transparency. In all public interviews and Twitter spaces, the most genuine thoughts are expressed. For example, why claim to be Layer 2? It is because the team noticed that many teams with similar but weaker technologies also claim to be Layer 2. This open and transparent attitude resonates well with the community.

Secondly, to avoid the impact of marketing fees on the fairness of the community, the project chose zero marketing expenses. Many people on YouTube, podcasts, and Twitter promote Merlin voluntarily. This creates an atmosphere of belief and spiritual totem.

Thirdly, compared to projects that wanted to ride on the popularity of the Bitcoin ecosystem and later joined the development, community members are more willing to accept rewards from teams like Merlin that started building early in the ecosystem.

Why do many Western players of NFT like Merlin? It's because Bitcoin's chips have been distributed for many years, but NFTs have just begun. Merlin's empowerment of NFTs has attracted many Western users. In addition, there is a great demand for earning interest on Bitcoin among many Bitcoin whales. Merlin Chain can fulfill the needs of both, which is one of the reasons for its popularity.

6. The core is

Target Users of Good Service Project

For the future competition in Bitcoin Layer 2, Jeff believes that the key is to do their own thing well and serve their target users well. There will be many potential builders in the ecosystem building together.

Merlin currently has three funds. One is a liquidity fund, which provides liquidity for the secondary market of the entire ecosystem and applications. Another is an ecological fund for project investment. The third one is Merlin token, which reserves a portion of tokens for builders and early development teams.

Currently, the Bitmap tech team is working on recursive protocols, BRC 420, and Merlin. They are driven forward by the market. On one hand, they do not want to give up their previous users and products. On the other hand, they also hope to address bigger needs and technological challenges. Therefore, they will do their best to face and solve these challenges.

7. Conclusion

In the future, we hope to have more and better developers join because Merlin has already attracted a large number of retail investors and this asset. How to better utilize these assets? How to better serve users is a matter of close attention to the team.

Currently, the Bitcoin ecosystem is still in a very early stage. We hope that all developers, investors, and the ecosystem will not pursue immediate benefits, but focus more on how to lay a solid foundation in the early stage and grow stronger together to build a better Bitcoin ecosystem.