This week’s crypto market saw a strong recovery after Federal Reserve Chairman Powell signaled upcoming interest rate cuts at Jackson Hole. Bitcoin led the charge, driving a rare broad-based rally across altcoins in August.
Bitcoin-related projects have been the main catalysts during this period, starting with the launch of the BTC ETF, which sparked interest in Bitcoin ecosystem tokens and projects. This week on CryptoSnap, Dr. DODO is introducing a Bitcoin-based project that’s been making waves—Fractal Bitcoin, which is currently in an active public testnet phase. Let’s dive into what Fractal Bitcoin is all about!

What is Fractal Bitcoin?

Fractal Bitcoin was developed to address the long-standing scalability challenges of the Bitcoin network. As Bitcoin’s popularity grew, the increased transaction volume on the network caused delays in transaction confirmations and higher fees. For years, the Bitcoin community has explored various solutions to these problems, such as the Lightning Network and other second-layer technologies. However, these solutions often require extra infrastructure or complex processes.

Against this backdrop, the UniSat team introduced the concept of Fractal Bitcoin, aiming to create a scaling solution that integrates smoothly into the Bitcoin ecosystem without major changes to Bitcoin’s core protocol, while significantly boosting network performance.

Inspired by fractal geometry, Fractal Bitcoin is designed to improve transaction throughput and speed by adding recursive, infinitely expandable layers on top of Bitcoin’s main chain, all while remaining fully compatible with the existing Bitcoin ecosystem. The core idea is to utilize Bitcoin’s fundamental code to build a branching, tree-like structure, where each layer can expand further, dramatically enhancing the network’s ability to process transactions in parallel.

Source: https://www.fractalbitcoin.io/

Key Technical Features of Fractal Bitcoin

• Core Technology: Utilizes Bitcoin’s core code, taking advantage of the blockchain’s built-in security and reliability.
• Scaling Method: Builds a tree-like structure with recursive expansion layers, increasing the network’s ability to process transactions in parallel.
• Performance Boost: Blocks are confirmed in about 30 seconds, and the transaction capacity is 20 times greater than that of the Bitcoin main chain.
• Compatibility: Fully compatible with existing Bitcoin wallets, tools, and mining hardware.
• Mining Options: Supports both permissionless mining and merged mining.
• Security: All transactions are ultimately traceable to the Bitcoin main chain, ensuring strong security and verifiability.
• Dynamic Adjustment: Automatically adjusts the number of expansion layers depending on network congestion levels.

Source: https://www.fractalbitcoin.io/about

Fractal Bitcoin Ecosystem

The Fractal Bitcoin ecosystem is growing rapidly, with several promising projects taking shape:

• UniWorlds: A metaverse project built on Fractal Bitcoin, offering customizable virtual worlds.
• InfinityAI: An AI platform that provides testing tasks and rewards users with points.
• Satspumpfun: A clone of the pump.fun token launch platform on Fractal Bitcoin.
• Motoswap: A decentralized exchange (DEX) project on the Fractal Bitcoin network.

Though the Fractal Bitcoin mainnet hasn’t officially launched yet, many of these projects are already live on the testnet and open for user testing. InfinityAI, in particular, offers various test tasks to help users get familiar with on-chain operations.

Fractal Bitcoin Current Status

Fractal Bitcoin is in its testnet phase. You can get test tokens by visiting the official faucet or by mining on the testnet. Fractal Bitcoin uses the same PoW (Proof of Work) consensus mechanism as Bitcoin, meaning BTC miners can easily switch to mining Fractal blocks with their existing ASIC, GPU, or other hardware. It also introduces an innovative merged mining mechanism called Cadence Mining, which combines permissionless mining and merged mining. In this system, each cycle consists of 3 blocks: 2 blocks are mined through permissionless mining, and 1 block is mined through merged mining.

• Permissionless Mining: Open to anyone with the right hardware, allowing them to mine Fractal blocks in a similar way to Bitcoin.
• Merged Mining: Specifically designed for BTC miners, enabling them to mine both Bitcoin and Fractal blocks simultaneously without using additional computational power.

According to the official website, the mainnet is set to launch in September.

Source: https://explorer-testnet.fractalbitcoin.io/

Fractal Bitcoin’s Potential and Impact

Fractal Bitcoin has the potential to greatly enhance the transaction efficiency of the Bitcoin network. With its innovative recursive layer structure, it can significantly boost transaction speed and processing power. This not only improves the user experience but could also open up new use cases for Bitcoin in areas like everyday payments and microtransactions.

Moreover, Fractal Bitcoin gives developers a larger playground for innovation. Because it’s fully compatible with Bitcoin’s core code, developers can explore new possibilities within a familiar framework, driving further innovation across the entire Bitcoin ecosystem.

Author’s Perspective

The most notable aspect of Fractal Bitcoin is undoubtedly its backing by the UniSat team, which is co-funded by Binance and OKX, two of the largest exchanges. UniSat’s success in the BRC-20 trading market has set a high bar that few products can match. Moreover, their previously issued token, $PIZZA, has shown solid price performance, earning approval from many retail investors.

That said, putting the team’s reputation aside, I don’t see any distinct advantages that Fractal Bitcoin has over other Bitcoin-based public chains, at least not from the project documents or the official website. In my opinion, the team falls short in explaining the fundamentals of Fractal Bitcoin. Both the documents and the website are overly simplified and lack detailed information on how Fractal Bitcoin operates. Most of the content explains how to use Fractal Bitcoin but doesn’t dive into its underlying mechanics.

Furthermore, whether Bitcoin really needs a functional public chain is still up for debate. So far, there hasn’t been a real demand for such a solution. Many Bitcoin Layer 2 public chains, such as Merlin and B² Network, have already launched but have not gained much traction from actual users. Most assets are limited to airdrop mining phases, as Bitcoin ecosystem users don’t seem to need complex functionalities—they’re more focused on the hype around Bitcoin chain assets.

That being said, since Fractal Bitcoin doesn’t use an L2 model but rather operates more like a sidechain with its own PoW mining, it may attract miners and maintain interest beyond just the initial launch.

I’m also hopeful that Fractal Bitcoin will introduce something new and unique, offering a different approach compared to other public chains, whether that’s through Ethereum’s DeFi ecosystem or Bitcoin-native BRC-20 and Rune token issuance trends.

Statement

1. This article is reprinted from [DODO Research], with copyright belonging to the original author [DODO Research]. If you have any concerns regarding this reprint, please contact the Gate Learn team , and we will address the issue promptly in accordance with the relevant procedures.
2. Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not constitute any form of investment advice.
3. Translations of this article into other languages were done by the Gate Learn team. Without proper credit to Gate.io, the translated content may not be copied, distributed, or plagiarized.