The Future Prospects of the Bitcoin Ecosystem: Who Will Lead the Next Wave of Development?

The market is eagerly anticipating Bitcoin to break through the $70,000 barrier. Many investors believe that if Bitcoin can break through and hold this price, the long-awaited bull market will officially begin.

Under this optimistic sentiment, important assets in the Bitcoin ecosystem have all seen increases. In the past week, $ORDI rose by as much as 25%, and $SATS rose by as much as 15%.

The rune market is bustling with activity. The rune GIZMO•IMAGINARY•KITTEN, represented by the new cat "Gizmo", surged after all were minted, reaching a peak market value of nearly $20 million. Although the creator himself denies any connection to the rune, market enthusiasm remains undiminished.

The rise of GIZMO•IMAGINARY•KITTEN has sparked the emergence of two other "Golden Dogs": KODA•FLUFFINGTON, featuring the dog "Koda" created by the founder of NodeMonkes, and POOKA•CANNOT•BE•STOPPED, based on the dog "POOKA" suspected to belong to the founder of OMB, zkshark. Both of these tokens quickly broke through a market value of 1 million USD, with KODA•FLUFFINGTON reaching nearly 4 million USD at its peak and POOKA•CANNOT•BE•STOPPED reaching nearly 3 million USD.

Several leading assets in the rune market have also seen significant increases. PUPS•WORLD•PEACE and BILLION•DOLLAR•CAT have risen nearly 9 times since the end of September, while DOG•GO•TO•THE•MOON has increased by up to 1 time. There are rumors that a certain trading platform is conducting internal security audits and compliance assessments on runes, which has led people to speculate about the recent rise in runes.

If a bull market is about to begin, what is the outlook for the Bitcoin ecosystem from the current perspective?

Conservative or Open: Bitcoin Faces a Major Choice

The revival of OP_CAT on the Bitcoin mainnet is of great significance. For the vision of "implementing smart contracts on the Bitcoin mainnet," the question we face now is not "can it be done," but rather a choice of "should it be done."

The popularity of the Ordinals protocol last year undoubtedly contributed significantly to the openness of the Bitcoin ecosystem, but this was only a small opening. The consensus of the Ordinals protocol is just a small subset of the Bitcoin consensus, so the FT protocol based on Ordinals still has shortcomings in user experience compared to other chains.

The limitations of Bitcoin consensus have led to shortcomings in the functionality and user experience of related protocols. Nevertheless, some developers still believe that these innovations are a disruption to the Bitcoin mainnet and continue to resist.

If the proposal "OP_CAT in Tapscript" is approved and the soft fork is eventually completed, it means that the consensus of Bitcoin will undergo a significant change, shifting from conservative to open, and the development space for Bitcoin will expand once again. The reason I say "expand once again" is that the runes have taken the narrative of "issuing coins on the Bitcoin mainnet" to its extreme, making it difficult for later entrants to shake it, unless a dimensionality reduction blow such as smart contracts emerges.

However, whether OP_CAT can be revived in this bull market is highly uncertain. It may still be in the "this topic needs more discussion" stage and has not yet reached the point of considering "whether it has received enough support". The Bitcoin NFT project Quantum Cats is essentially a "campaign" regarding the OP_CAT issue.

If OP_CAT can successfully be revived in this bull market, then the technical narrative of the Bitcoin ecosystem will almost certainly be led by OP_CAT. The main targets currently attempting to revive OP_CAT are Quantum Cats and the CAT20 protocol.

If it cannot be revived, then the rune may continue to hold the most influential FT protocol status in the Bitcoin ecosystem.

The rune market still needs to be tested.

Runes only truly become an FT after being listed on the exchange. Prior to that, the nature of runes is not much different from NFTs, and their market value fluctuates significantly. The real market value of runes needs to be verified through the liquidity of the exchange, which may also be one of the reasons why the listing of rune coins on exchanges is relatively slow.

In addition to centralized exchanges, there are also Rune Swap products like Dotswap on the Bitcoin mainnet, and a certain trading platform is about to launch Rune Swap functionality. Interestingly, while Dotswap has a good product, it has not gained enough traffic; instead, CAT20 has brought attention to Dotswap. It remains to be seen whether a certain trading platform can improve the on-chain liquidity of Runes with its own traffic and user experience.

In terms of currency richness, Rune already has "Cult coins" like PUPS•WORLD•PEACE, but the hot topics are still relatively thin, mainly revolving around a few large NFT projects or based on the size of the holder groups. More participants are needed to create a better environment for the formation of content and Cult coins. This is also reflected in PUPS•WORLD•PEACE and BILLION•DOLLAR•CAT bridging to other public chains in search of greater breakthroughs.

In comparison, the prospects of BRC-20 are currently rather bleak, with $ORDI, $SATS, and $PIZZA making up almost the entirety of BRC-20.

The NFT blue-chip tier tends to stabilize, and the uniqueness of the narrative remains to be explored.

NodeMonkes, Bitcoin Puppets, OMB, Quantum Cats, and Pizza Ninjas have solidified their blue-chip status. In addition, Bitcoin Shrooms is a special presence, with a low total supply and a stable floor price above 1 BTC, thanks to its early inscription number.

In the field of pure art NFTs, art on Bitcoin needs to seek breakthroughs in themes, such as conceptual art or AI art that combines the cultural attributes of Bitcoin. From this perspective, CENTS may be the most unique art series on Bitcoin at present, and its uniqueness lies in "the difficulty of replicating this style on other chains."

The artist behind CENTS, Rutherford Chang, filters through a large number of penny coins to select copper pennies from 1982 and earlier, not only engraving them onto Bitcoin but also melting the physical coins into a complete block of copper. This creates a "tangle of value": it is both the 1 cent engraved on Bitcoin and the 1 Bit engraved on the penny; it artificially causes the deflation of the penny and the "deflation" of Bitcoin; the changes in the relationship between the legal value of a 1 cent coin and its production cost, and the value of 1 Bit, etc. This narrative is difficult to replicate on other chains, as the coins of other chains are hard to associate with real coins or currency.

The DMT concept is also a unique artistic narrative of Bitcoin worth paying attention to. It is based on various data in the Bitcoin blockchain such as block hash values, size, height, target difficulty, etc. ( to create specific digital assets. Currently, aside from Natcats, this leading project, the DMT concept has not yet garnered sufficient market attention.

) Conclusion

Whether OP_CAT can be resurrected in this bull market will determine the development direction of the Bitcoin ecosystem. Some currently not yet market hotspots, such as the Lightning Network ### Taro, RGB, CKB (, BitVM, etc., may gain more attention in the absence of OP_CAT's revival.

The Bitcoin ecosystem is the only area in the current crypto market that can continue to promote the "technology narrative." It's like a computer still equipped with an old processor, where there is enough hardware to update, but the key lies in whether the administrators can reach a consensus. However, reaching a consensus is not easy; it involves not only clashes of ideas but also potential entanglements of real interests.

Regardless, the Bitcoin ecosystem will undoubtedly become one of the important narratives of this bull market, and will present a unique development trend compared to other ecosystems.

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