The creator of Bitcoin’s fast-rising BRC-20 token standard, known as Domo, has raised concerns about UniSat’s attempt to take over the entire protocol through the implementation of the Ordinals Jubilee upgrade. UniSat announced on Monday that they would be implementing the upgrade in order to confirm the compatibility of brc-20 with Ordinals, without causing a split in the protocol.
However, Domo believes that UniSat’s actions are detrimental to the interests of the BRC-20 community, stating, “I believe rushing these updates in BRC20 is reckless, disregards their peer indexers, and could potentially harm the broader community of BRC20 users.” Domo expressed his concerns to X in a message on Thursday.
The Ordinals Jubilee update aims to address the issue of “cursed Ordinals” – Bitcoin inscriptions that are unrecognized by the ord indexer, resulting in their absence from current Ordinals wallets and marketplaces. While Domo is supportive of protocol enhancements, he deems it unsafe to implement the update without proper testing, coordination, and infrastructure, citing past issues with similar upgrades.
Furthermore, Domo finds the timing of the upgrade suspicious, suspecting that UniSat’s actions are part of a strategic plan to gain control of the protocol. Instead, he encourages his followers to align themselves with the Layer 1 Foundation, a non-profit organization that prioritizes a “safety-first” approach to protocol maintenance.
“UniSat is misleading its followers by claiming it is trying to avoid a protocol ‘split’,” said Layer 1 in response to the situation. They further added, “A divergence between the Ordinals and BRC-20 community and ecosystems would indeed constitute a protocol ‘split’ rather than a ‘fork’, which could lead to numerous cross-affecting cases that are much more challenging to handle than a fork.”
UniSat is a browser extension that allows users to send, receive, and inscribe files into Bitcoin as NFTs or tokens, as well as shop for trending NFT collections. The platform boasts an advantage over the official Ordinals wallet by not requiring users to run their own full Bitcoin nodes.
BRC-20 tokens have been instrumental in driving up Bitcoin’s transaction fees to over $20 per transaction in the past two months. However, fees have since decreased to under $3 each, according to mempool.space.
