UniSat Takes Control of BRC-20 Protocol: The Vicious Competition Arising from the Market Opportunities in the Mingwen Industry.

UniSat announced that it will proceed with the update of Ordinals v0.13.0, which has sparked opposition from other stakeholders in the industry, including demo. However, UniSat disregards the opposition and insists on completing the update. Under the significant market interests of BRC-20, fierce competition in the market is gradually brewing.

Table of Contents:
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UniSat Announces v0.13.0 Upgrade
Opposition from the BRC-20 Community
Best in Slot Indicates Serious Bugs in v0.13.1
domo Accuses UniSat of Manipulating BRC-20
TRAC States that v0.9 Version Cannot be Maintained Forever
UniSat Insists on the Update
Community Member Opinions
Issues Highlighted by the BRC-20 Market Opportunity
Intense Competition Resulting from Massive BRC-20 Interests
Inadequate Infrastructure of the Protocol

The event originated from the announcement made by the Mingwen Exchange and UniSat last night, stating that they will proceed with the upgrade of Ordinals v0.13.0 (Jubilee) and specifically emphasizing that it will ensure there is no protocol split (meaning they hope other indexers will follow suit). If other indexers, including Magic Eden and OKX Wallet, do not upgrade together, it means that there will be version discrepancies in Mingwen on different exchanges, leading to settlement errors and double-spending issues, which may result in user asset losses.

However, not all community members approve of this upgrade, especially after the security incident. The Ordinals aggregator and Best in Slot expressed on Twitter that the latest v0.13.1 update of BRC-20 has serious bugs and may have other potential issues. They strongly recommend that all BRC-20 indexers continue to use the 0.9 version of the Ordinals protocol until this issue is resolved. The team believes that stability should be the top priority for BRC-20. A financial protocol worth billions of dollars cannot withstand untested version upgrades.

Best in Slot also suggests freezing the proposal, which proposes that only extensively tested and proven operational versions of the Ordinals protocol, especially the 0.9 version, should be used for BRC-20 tokens. Following this, domo, the founder of BRC-20, expressed on Twitter that UniSat’s independent upgrade to Ordinals v0.13.0 is a lack of respect for other indexers in the industry and may cause other potential harm to the BRC-20 protocol. domo believes that UniSat’s goal is to control the BRC-20 market. From the timing of the update and the incentive policy’s delay, it can be inferred that this is not just a technical update event, but a deliberate business strategy by UniSat to gain dominance and control over the BRC-20 protocol. demo hopes that the community can reject the fork proposed by UniSat and support the maintenance of the protocol in a non-profit and safety-first manner, such as the work being done by Layer 1 Foundation, which demo supports.

Benny, the founder of the decentralized indexer project TRAC, agrees that more time is needed for testing in order to update the protocol safely. However, Benny also states that it is not possible to maintain v0.9 forever. Half an hour after domo’s post, UniSat immediately posted again, reaffirming its position and stating that it will do its best to promote the Ordinals Jubilee upgrade to ensure the progress of the update. However, the team also states that they will try to prevent a split between BRC-20 and the Ordinals protocol and clarifies that a split is not the same as a fork. While the latter is incompatible, the former will result in different versions of assets on the same network, causing ongoing bilateral effects and greater complexity, which should be prevented to the best of their ability.

From UniSat’s recent post, it can be seen that they are sticking to their original strategy and continuing to confront demo and Layer 1 Foundation. Many community members express their confusion and disapproval of why UniSat voluntarily allows the possibility of protocol split, merely to grasp market interests before the infrastructure becomes more mature. However, some community members believe that domo is also speaking out to protect their own interests, as their BRC-100 protocol is built on Ordinals v0.9, and UniSat is relatively more focused on advancing the protocol.

Amidst the continuous pursuit of opportunities in Mingwen and BRC-20, competitors have their own calculations and eagerly seize the opportunity, resulting in the current intense competition. In an environment lacking communication and prioritizing interests, this fierce competition will be detrimental to industry development and may make everyone a loser, with ordinary users being the biggest victims. This event once again highlights the inadequate infrastructure of the Mingwen protocol. Whether it is a complete governance and upgrade framework, code audit tools, or token standards themselves, they are still in continuous iterative development, making it a relatively immature industry, indirectly leading to the aforementioned problems.

As participants in the community, it is necessary to objectively receive information and think independently to understand the future development and potential issues of the ecosystem. As Mingwen holders, it is even more important to pay attention to the risks of this industry and consider how to protect oneself in an environment where ordinary users have no rights to participate.

BRC-20
BRC-100
domo
Ordinals
UniSat