Recently, BRC-20 token SATS has performed exceptionally well. From its low on August 5, its price doubled in just 10 days. On August 12 alone, it surged by over 24%, surpassing ORDI, the former leader of the BRC-20 sector, and making its way into the top 100 cryptocurrencies by market capitalization.
The community largely attributes this rise to the anticipation of the Fractal Bitcoin mainnet launch in September, which is developed by UniSat, a leading Bitcoin ecosystem wallet. This isn’t UniSat’s first attempt to empower SATS, but previous efforts were less successful.
Due to its large supply and wide distribution, SATS was once regarded as the biggest meme in the Bitcoin ecosystem. Why is UniSat so committed to empowering SATS, and will it succeed this time? Odaily Star Daily explores these questions in this article.
First Empowerment Attempt: BRC-20 Swap Fees in SATS
The story of SATS is legendary in the Bitcoin ecosystem, no matter how many times it’s told.
SATS was the first massive meme token minted on Bitcoin, with a total supply of 2.1 quadrillion, minted over six months, and held by 36,000 addresses at the time of completion. Unlike other BRC-20 tokens minted during the inscription craze, SATS was mostly minted during a low point in the Bitcoin ecosystem, indicating that it was supported by a loyal group of Bitcoin users.
Given this large, dedicated community, it was no surprise that UniSat, the most widely used wallet in the Bitcoin ecosystem, took notice. Shortly after SATS was fully minted, UniSat announced plans to empower SATS through BRC-20 swaps on the mainnet. Specifically, SATS would be used as a transaction fee in BRC-20 swaps on the mainnet, with a 0.3% service fee charged to all users, 1/6 (0.05%) of which would go to UniSat, and the remaining 5/6 (0.25%) distributed to liquidity providers.
However, this first empowerment attempt ended in failure. UniSat’s BRC-20 swap module launched on the Bitcoin mainnet in November 2023 but was later suspended in April 2024 due to disagreements with other developers and challenges with the “on-demand trading” model, which wasn’t fully decentralized. UniSat returned all collected SATS fees to users via an airdrop.
Second Empowerment Attempt: Open Indexer with SATS Incentives
In addition to transaction fees, UniSat explored other ways to empower SATS. In December 2023, UniSat announced that it would open its indexer to mining in January 2024, with SATS as the incentive.
This was UniSat’s second attempt to empower SATS, but it also ended in failure. At that time, the BRC-20 indexers were not unified, and major players were running their own indexers. UniSat was targeted for criticism, with Runestone founder Leonidas questioning on X (formerly Twitter) whether UniSat’s delay in open-sourcing its indexer was an attempt to create a competitive barrier.
Under pressure, UniSat eventually abandoned plans to create an independent indexer, and the second SATS empowerment attempt also collapsed.
Third Empowerment Attempt: Fractal Empowerment of SATS, Extending the Mainnet Vision
Despite the failures of the first two attempts, UniSat did not give up and announced its third plan to empower SATS in July 2024.
UniSat announced that SATS would be used as a reward in Fractal Bitcoin, a Bitcoin scalability solution developed by UniSat. Fractal Swap employs a competitive rollup mechanism, allowing users to earn SATS rewards by submitting their rollup results to the sequencer. With the BRC-20 ecosystem in a downturn at the time, UniSat’s empowerment of SATS was met with enthusiasm from the community and the market, leading to a 30% price increase for SATS that day.
In fact, UniSat’s empowerment of SATS on Fractal Bitcoin was not entirely unexpected.
Earlier this year, UniSat hinted on X that it planned to use SATS as a reward for the rollup mechanism. Moreover, in the official announcement of the mainnet BRC-20 swap’s closure, UniSat mentioned that future airdrops on the Fractal Bitcoin mainnet would prioritize users who interacted with the mainnet BRC-20 swap and deposited assets.
If UniSat’s previous closure of the mainnet BRC-20 swap was a necessary response to various challenges, then the Fractal Bitcoin swap represents a continuation of that vision, with consistent efforts to empower SATS.
Will This Empowerment Succeed?
Why is UniSat so focused on empowering SATS instead of other BRC-20 tokens?
Some believe UniSat is a major holder of SATS, controlling a large number of tokens, and that this move is driven by self-interest. Others think UniSat simply recognized the trend early and chose to ride the wave, similar to how DOGE and SHIB were empowered as meme coins reached a certain level of prominence.
Will this Fractal Bitcoin empowerment of SATS succeed? It’s too early to say. Previous empowerment attempts failed due to challenges in business operations, and Fractal Bitcoin seems to face similar issues. For example, questions remain about which cross-chain solution should be used between Bitcoin and Fractal Bitcoin to achieve security and efficiency, and whether running OP_CAT can truly enhance Fractal Bitcoin’s programmability. The path forward for Fractal Bitcoin is still shrouded in uncertainty.
As for SATS itself, since its minting, it has been listed on major exchanges and has experienced several Bitcoin ecosystem cycles. On-chain data shows that SATS addresses are still growing, with 49,019 addresses currently holding SATS, more than at the time of minting.
Therefore, whether UniSat succeeds or not, the ultimate status of SATS—whether as a meme coin or a utility token—may not be the most important issue. As long as influence and discussion continue, even if one UniSat fails, another “UniSat” may rise to take its place.
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