{"id":16812,"date":"2024-09-09T15:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-09-09T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/fractal-bitcoin-a-breakthrough-sidechain-or-just-another-altcoin\/"},"modified":"2024-09-09T15:00:00","modified_gmt":"2024-09-09T12:00:00","slug":"fractal-bitcoin-a-breakthrough-sidechain-or-just-another-altcoin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/fractal-bitcoin-a-breakthrough-sidechain-or-just-another-altcoin\/","title":{"rendered":"Fractal Bitcoin: a breakthrough sidechain or just another altcoin?"},"content":{"rendered":"

At one time, the bitcoin hard forks Bitcoin Cash and Bitcoin SV made the \u201csplitting\u201d of the original cryptocurrency\u2019s network one of the community\u2019s hottest topics. The hype has since passed, and the creators of those blockchains, Roger Ver<\/a> and Craig Wright<\/a>, are remembered mainly for their legal troubles.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Crypto history is cyclical, and in 2024 scaling bitcoin is back on the agenda. Oleg Cash Coin examines whether the latest approaches differ from their predecessors through the lens of Fractal Bitcoin.<\/p>\n

What is Fractal Bitcoin<\/h2>\n

As crypto has grown and its user base has expanded, trends have emerged: meme coins, mini-apps<\/a> in Telegram, retrodrops and second-layer (L2) solutions built atop a major project \u2014 bitcoin or Ethereum. Typically, each rides the network effects of a handful of flagships that cracked the top ranks on CoinMarketCap.<\/p>\n

The market\u2019s rapid expansion has left many newcomers unable to distinguish original ideas from copy-paste. Fractal Bitcoin exemplifies how to assemble a new blockchain project out of old fads.<\/p>\n

Various sources describe the network as a sidechain or an L2 built on bitcoin. One of its headline features is a mechanism touted<\/a> as Cadence Mining.<\/p>\n

In essence, bitcoin miners can mine every third block in Fractal Bitcoin, earning a reward only for that one. The remaining two blocks go to \u201cfractal\u201d miners.<\/p>\n

The project immediately received backing<\/a> from Antpool. The pool is a subsidiary of Bitmain, one of the largest manufacturers of hardware for mining the first cryptocurrency. Both organisations are known for promoting Bitcoin Cash and other initiatives aimed, if not against \u201cdigital gold\u201d, then at maximising profit, and do nothing to expand bitcoin\u2019s ecosystem.<\/p>\n

Fractal is backed by the team behind the Unisat wallet, which has ties to the development of Bitcoin SV from the \u201cpseudo\u2011Satoshi\u201d Craig Wright. Journalist Colin Wu reported<\/a> this in 2023.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Merged mining is hardly new. Dogecoin adopted the Auxiliary Proof\u2011of\u2011Work (AuxPoW) algorithm in 2014. Litecoin founder Charlie Lee proposed<\/a> the mechanism to improve both networks\u2019 resilience to 51% attacks. By July 2019, nearly 90% of Dogecoin\u2019s total hashrate was accounted<\/a> for by the largest Litecoin pools.<\/p>\n

Originally applied to Proof\u2011of\u2011Work networks, these ideas have since evolved into Proof\u2011of\u2011Stake restaking protocols such as EigenLayer. In both cases, validators and miners simultaneously deploy the same resources across different projects or networks.<\/p>\n

Fractal is just a fork<\/h2>\n

The project\u2019s site states that the developers use the code of bitcoin\u2019s reference client \u2014 Bitcoin Core. That has allowed the team to claim that Fractal is \u201cfully compatible with bitcoin\u2019s ecosystem and infrastructure\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n

At the same time, Fractal targets support for BRC\u201120 token formats, opening the door to DEX<\/span>, DeFi, stablecoins and other areas.<\/p>\n

Calling the network a bitcoin sidechain is inaccurate. Fractal Bitcoin is an ordinary fork\u2014one of the hundreds, if not thousands, since the launch of the leading cryptocurrency.<\/p>\n

Forks take ready\u2011made code from a working project, tweak parameters to their needs and launch a separate network. Such a project does not expand bitcoin\u2019s ecosystem; it merely taps its liquidity.<\/p>\n

Until roughly 2018, the main source of that liquidity was the hard fork \u2014 splitting a network, as with Bitcoin Cash. Since then the narrative has lost steam: CoinGecko lists<\/a> only four projects in this category with a combined capitalisation of $7.8bn.<\/p>\n

Tokenomics<\/h2>\n

Fractal\u2019s tokens are called FB and the supply is capped at 210 million. The premine is 50%, and only the remainder will be available for mining. A small portion is earmarked for a drop to early users of Unisat products.<\/p>\n

\"Fractal
Data: Fractal Bitcoin.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The tokenomics are opaque and include the standard allocation buckets: treasury, early investors and advisers, grants and developers.\u00a0<\/p>\n

A small amount of FB will likely reach the market via an airdrop. The site presents two main retrodrop programmes called Fractal Mainnet Bootstrap from the Unisat team and the OKX exchange.<\/p>\n

These programmes are allotted 1,000,000 FB \u2014 0.47% of the maximum token count, or 0.95% of the premine of 105,000,000 FB. The remaining 49% stayed with the project team.<\/p>\n

Conclusions<\/h2>\n

Technically, the project is not a bitcoin L2 and does not use it for consensus or as fuel to pay for transactions.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Contrary to the developers\u2019 claims, it scales digital gold in the same way Ethereum does: you can create a wrapped BTC there and call it an improvement to the first cryptocurrency\u2019s functionality.<\/p>\n

Setting aside the project\u2019s technical side and its market prospects, Fractal Bitcoin relies on old narratives to attract users: in essence it is no different from many other altcoins.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At one time, the bitcoin hard forks Bitcoin Cash and Bitcoin SV made the \u201csplitting\u201d of the original cryptocurrency\u2019s network one of the community\u2019s hottest topics. The hype has since passed, and the creators of those blockchains, Roger Ver and Craig Wright, are remembered mainly for their legal troubles.\u00a0\u00a0 Crypto history is cyclical, and in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16811,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"select":"","news_style_id":"","cryptorium_level":"","_short_excerpt_text":"","creation_source":"","_metatest_mainpost_news_update":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1144],"tags":[18,1137,277],"class_list":["post-16812","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-longreads","tag-bitcoin","tag-cryptocurrency-mining","tag-scaling"],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"views":"25","promo_type":"","layout_type":"","short_excerpt":"","is_update":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16812","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16812"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16812\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16811"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16812"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16812"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16812"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}