Interview with BRC-20 founder Domo: Ethereum’s “traitor” went into seclusion for 48 hours, rewriting Bitcoin history

Original text: Isabel Foxen Duke

Translated by: Qin Xiaofeng, Odaily Planet Daily

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Editor 's Note: In March 2023, Domo launched the BRC-20 token standard. Over the past two years, the Bitcoin ecosystem has also experienced the tide of the crypto industry, from being ignored and questioned to being sought after by the whole nation, and finally falling from the crowded place. The birth of BRC-20 is undoubtedly epoch-making for the Bitcoin ecosystem, but who is still sticking to the Bitcoin ecosystem and BRC-20 today?

It was the second anniversary of the birth of BRC-20. Founder Domo, who never accepted public video interviews, was interviewed for the first time on the Isabel Foxen Duke program, telling his crypto experience, the story before and after the birth of BRC-20, his views on UniSat , and the future development plan of BRC-20.

Before entering the industry, NFT Summer won the first pot of gold

Host: I 'm very happy that you have come. This is your first time to be interviewed by video. We want the audience to learn more about your story. I heard that before Ordinals and BRC-20 you didn't actually pay much attention to Bitcoin. Is it true? What did you do before participating in the Ordinals protocol?

Domo: I really didn’t focus most of my energy on Bitcoin two years ago, and like most people, it was the Ordinals protocol that brought me back to Bitcoin. Before that, Bitcoin only went up and down on my account, but actually did nothing.

I was exposed to cryptocurrencies relatively late, and I only started my crypto journey in 2019, but I still didn’t participate deeply, mainly learning about some basic encryption information through Reddit and YouTube. The real shift happened in the summer of 2020, when I was working in data science, and I discovered DeFi innovations on Ethereum, especially projects like Uniswap .

There is very clean data on the chain that I don't even need to take a few hours to process it to analyze it. So, the first thing I did was to grab Ethereum data for analysis and set up a Telegram bot to track traders on the chain, and time also proved that they were the most profitable wave of people in the DeFi summer at that time.

Later, I put all my monthly salary into Bitcoin and Ethereum, but they were actually almost bankrupted me, so I realized maybe there was a chance only in the crypto-native realm. Later around January-February 2021 I found some particularly useful NFT Discords, and I used my on-chain data skills to catch a lot of Alpha in the market madness of NFT Summer, so I did a great job in 2021 and had a great time.

But I've been looking for ways to join the industry full time again. Until November 2021 I met a guy in an NFT Discord who worked for a large crypto payment company, then I joined their company and led the team’s on-chain data analytics work for the next few years until I released the BRC-20 protocol.

The birth of BRC-20: Bitcoin punks and .sats domain names gave great

inspiration

Host: Do you remember when you first heard about Ordinals?

Domo: I can’t remember the specific time, but I probably saw it in January 2023, but I did nothing at that time. Until I saw it again in February, I realized it was no longer just an experimental thing that a small group of people play with in the basement.

The early Ordinals collection also played an important role in the birth of the BRC-20. For example, Bitcoin punks, they actually first invented "Fair launch" on Bitcoin because we have no way to distribute it through smart contracts.

Then the .sats domain name was born, which really brought data in Jason format to the public and into the Bitcoin memory pool. When I turned on the computer and found it while working, I felt it was amazing, and we took another step forward. The Ordinals protocol is no longer just an art protocol, it can also use Bitcoin as a data availability layer.

The infrastructure is right in front of us and you can do what you want. So I wonder if we can do something else? From that moment on, I think the Ordinals protocol is like a gateway to the availability of Bitcoin data, which is easily accessible to most users regardless of technical capabilities or background.

Host: Did you conceive this agreement with others before creating the BRC-20 agreement? Or have experienced some community discussion?

Domo: After seeing the .sats domain name in JSON format on the chain, I saw another blogger called " redphone " ( https://x.com/redphonecrypto) posted a tweet. He teamed up with Delphi Ventures to release a pseudo-spec, and I think his design will be successful, but it lacks a few key things, but it is still inspiring.

Later I locked myself in the room for two days and created the BRC-20 protocol, but a large part of the credit is still attributed to the redphone . Over the next few days I built a start date and indexer on the data side, but it was the worst indexer ever and broke in just one hour of booting, but it at least proved that this way is indeed feasible.

It took me a while to figure out two things, one is the hierarchy of the balance, including the available balance and the transferable balance. Another is how to prove that you own this thing? Because in fact anyone can inscribe themselves and transfer money, which also means anyone can steal anyone's balance, I have a specification that should initially include 4 functions (deployment, casting, transfer and transaction).

The trading function was not initially online because considering the situation at that time, I think this is adding unnecessary complexity, and this problem can be solved later. But I think this omission is necessary, and one of the biggest gains I have from this experience is keeping it simple, which I think is a key decision.

Host: So you launched this token standard and deployed the first inscription ever, and then posted it on Twitter and started to get a lot of attention, what happened to you the next week?

Domo: I deployed ordi as a test at the beginning to prove whether this token specification is feasible. But actually someone used this protocol before I posted the gitbook, so before I released the token standard, someone deployed another token and when I saw it, I thought about publishing this token specification as soon as possible.

One hour after the BRC-20 was released, my friend sent me a private message saying that the experiment failed, so I really didn't sleep well that night. But I still think ordi may have been cast within 24. They may be using the Inscription Casting Tool or the Ordinals client itself. At that time, I didn't know who created an indexer to view the balance by tracking ordi's transactions.

Host: Why is the BRC-20 so fast that people started building tools for this thing within about 16 hours after you sent your tweet?

Domo: I think previous innovation attempts have become the attention of Ordinals core community , such as .sats domains, so they will be interested when there is something new to try. Also, I think some people have also had business opportunities with inscribed tools that only require simple batch inscribeds to become money trees. In short, from the user's perspective, these are factors of the right time and place.

UniSat's contribution to BRC-20

Host: When did UniSat participate in the construction of BRC-20?

Domo: UniSat was originally an etching tool, and probably in early April 2023 , they launched the indexer. But I don't remember how I contacted UniSat later. Maybe I sent them a private message, maybe they sent me a private message.

At that time, I was sent private messages by a lot of people, and there were a lot of scammers who would say you should deploy ORDI to Ethereum's liquidity pool. What attracted me to UniSat is that they have developed relevant tools and have been tested in practice, and it can be seen that they have a solid technical team behind them. The UniSat team comes from the BSV community, where in fact most early builders and Ordinals players are from. I think the emergence of indexers has also triggered a second wave of OTC craze because instead of blindly trusting, now you can verify through the middleman whether you actually received it.

Host: So, they voluntarily participated in the construction, and there is no cooperation between you?

Domo: I was really tired at the time, so I was willing to support anyone who volunteered to build. UniSat was the most engaged and competent team at the time, and there were various other teams that helped early on, such as Best In Slot, and I appreciate their help.

I had a comment with UniSat when building the indexer, but I was not involved in the construction of the UniSat market. It wasn't until UniSat established the BRC-20 market at the end of April that we really got good pricing data, and that's probably the first time I've really started to focus on prices, as OTC trading is often very unreliable.

BRC-20 feels stressed after the explosion

Host: Will you feel pressure after BRC-20 become popular?

Domo: Yes, it's stressful, and even though we've already established the indexer, there are still many voices on Twitter saying that it's wrong both technically and Bitcoin's originality.

Before I released BRC-20 I was a "Ethereum person" and I didn't have any connections in the Bitcoin community like I did in Ethereum. Frankly speaking, I didn't know much about Bitcoin at that time. My opinion on the Bitcoin community at the time was that this was the ideal proposed by Satoshi Nakamoto, including open access, freedom and fairness. So I was thinking about how to imitate Bitcoin’s concept of fairness, freedom and openness in this experiment, which ended up leading me to make several decisions, which I think is also an important factor in the success of the fair coin function.

But these negative remarks still had a great impact on me at that time. Someone would ask me what I would improve if I was recreating BRC-20. But in my opinion, the BRC-20 is a one in a million success story, and it would have been possible to turn the situation around if any design variables were adjusted at the beginning. The BRC-20 is indeed a very inefficient protocol and we can improve it, but there are some risks in blind improvements.

I'm glad I didn't follow a lot of those suggestions, we took a slow improvement approach because I think that only actual ideas can improve the agreement in the long run, and hasty action will only be a stopgap approach.

The exchange will launch an inscription without knowing in advance

Host: Before ORDI launched centralized exchanges such as OKX, did you participate in the listing of centralized exchanges? Do you know what will happen next?

Domo: Actually I wasn't involved, except for Gate, they sent me a private message in advance, but when I woke up I found it was on the market. The only thing I can say may be some factors that contribute to listing. From the perspective of exchange listing, 2023 was a special period. Nothing new happened at the beginning of the year, and PEPE was just a flash in the pan. So BRC20 was the star of the market narrative at that time, and it was logical that these exchanges listed coins.

In addition, the vast majority of tokens held by exchanges are Bitcoin. What I assumed at the time was that if Bitcoins leave their exchanges and trade on the UniSat market or other markets on the chain, they would create liquidity bubbles. To solve this problem, the exchange can only go online these assets and then build tools around them.

BRC-20 Decentralization: The Future BRC-20 is a good thing without Domo,

but it is not yet

Host: Although the indexers built by UniSat are mainstream, Best In Slot also creates an indexer. Can you share how Best In Slot is involved, what problems they are trying to solve, and how they try to index BRC20 in different ways?

Domo: I met Best In Slot at a conference in Singapore in September 2023, and I may have met again in Miami. I don’t remember the exact time, but we have been talking for a while. They said they built an indexer and that the team has a strong technical background from Ethereum, and indexing is their expertise.

I'm glad that there was a super competitor interested in BRC-20 indexing because there was a saying at the time that BRC-20 was centralized and we needed an alliance of multiple indexers. So then we had OPI, which is a more decentralized client that can be run easily by anyone.

Host: When Casey made a major upgrade to the Ordinals protocol, what impact did it have on the BRC-20 indexer? How did you deal with it?

Domo: My first consideration is security. In my opinion, some new upgrades do not improve the protocol and will bring us risks. In the end, the indexer debate may have caused riots due to lack of communication, but UniSat compromised. I appreciate everyone’s collaboration, everyone agrees that any form of forking is not in the best interest of the community, and then find a solution that suits everyone’s needs and interests.

Later to avoid similar situations from happening again, we created the Layer 1 Foundation, the best use of which is to establish some kind of governance rules so that we can handle these decisions in a smarter way in the future, both UniSat and Best In Slot are the main maintainers of the agency, collaborating with each other.

I am very satisfied with the result, and it should be like this for the open source protocol. Over time, the founder's idea is not necessarily the best, and it is healthy to join better technology, more experience and more people who are committed to the protocol. I like this way of development and I feel like I am more of a coordinator. In the future Domo may no longer be a part of BRC20, and I think that will be a good thing, but obviously not yet.

Swap module and programmable module of BRC-20

Host: You have been talking about two major upgrades to the protocol for the past 8 or 9 months, the swap module and the programmable module. Can you share what these are?

Domo: The swap module can be traced back to the summer of 2023. We realized at the time that we did not trade these assets like trading homogeneous tokens, but were more like NFTs. Any reasonable protocol would work hard to improve this user experience. This is why the swap module was born. Of course, we made the mistake at the time that this black and white technology was not feasible, but then UniSat and Fractal networks proved that it had a good experience.

But people are talking more about UniSat swap, but this module is not exclusive to UniSat. Any team can deploy the swap module and adopt tokens.

Programmable module I remember talking about it at a Bitcoin Summit in Taiwan in 2023, and I think it makes sense if they can solve the problem of Bitcoin adaptability, use UTXO to bind data to Bitcoin, etc.

I think the programmable protocol will still win in the market in the end. Two years have passed, and we are still trading BRC20 tokens by trading NFTs. This experience is very bad. If you are a Solana degen who comes to trade on the Bitcoin network, you may want to return to Solana immediately. We have to adapt to the market, which is why I am interested in programmable modules.

But, for me, the most urgent task is to keep the BRC-20 assets alive. The programmable module and the "Single step transfer" we have been studying can better integrate the BRC-20 into other ecosystems so that users do not have to "hang themselves" on the BRC20, making the assets being created an object to support, rather than as the standard itself.

Host: Can the programmable module solve the interoperability problem of BRC-20 and other protocols such as Runes? Or do we still need L2? What are your ideas?

Domo: There are various solutions currently, such as centralized cross-chain bridges, L1.5 layers or those L2. Interestingly, in the Bitcoin field, everyone is making the assumption of trust, who should we believe, etc. But if we look at it from an industry perspective, we should understand the needs of different people. For example, if you are a Bitcoin whale, there may be only a few protocols such as Babylon that can meet your conditions.

But if you are a degen, you won't care about that at all, because you're used to centralization and you're just here to look for Alpha. I don't know how this interoperability game ends up back, but I think it's still necessary.

Host: Do you think BRC-20 has an advantage over some other protocols that are developing programmability?

Domo: If the BRC-20 does nothing at the moment, I think the most likely scenario is that some programmable protocols appear and dominate the market, and the BRC-20 will not be able to participate because it is not interoperable. But if the BRC-20 takes the programmable route, there is a chance to regain attention, but that doesn't mean it will succeed.

BRC-20's single-step transfer

Host: As a builder, what problems do you want the community to focus on solving?

Domo: I think a lot of people only focus on what’s in front of them, and ignore the fact that there are a lot of interesting things happening in the Bitcoin ecosystem. For example, in a few months or even a year, those bit VM bridges may create huge profit opportunities like DeFi. If I were a builder, I would work in this direction. Recalling the early days of Ordinals, when it was quite happy to be a part of the industry, people respect each other and are full of optimism, and I hope people can get back to that.

Host: You mentioned "Single step transfer" many times. Is this a new thing that BRC-20 users expect?

Domo: Single-step transfer can abstract the wallet, solving the problem of the number of Bitcoin wallets. Not only will it make the user experience better, it will also make the BRC20 easier to access other systems than before. Many cross-chain bridge designs are still too complex for users, and users are used to sending UTXOs, and experience similar to simple cross-chain bridge locking. We even plan on enabling lightning channels and so on, but I don't want to make a commitment yet.