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OKX and Unisat, the open-source Chrome wallet extension for Bitcoin Ordinals, announced on Friday they entered into a partnership to establish a BRC-20 token standard. BRC-20 and Ordinals have been a popular subject in recent weeks and the reason behind the division in the Bitcoin community.

Cryptocurrency exchange OKX joined forces with UniSat Wallet to create a cross-verification process for BRC-20 transaction indexing on the Bitcoin blockchain. As part of the partnership, UniSat is set to become OKXs BRC-20 market data supplier.

We are delighted to announce that @OKX and @unisat_wallet are collaborating to develop a cross-verification process for BRC-20 transaction indexing on the #Bitcoin blockchain. This marks the initial stride towards decentralized indexing, enhancing the overall robustness and reliability of BRC-20.

BRC-20 refers to an experimental token standard introduced in March 2023 by an anonymous crypto developer known as Domo. Like ERC-20 standards on Ethereum, BRC-20 allows users to issue fungible tokens using Bitcoins Ordinals protocol.

Since the standard was rolled out, the demand for Bitcoin Ordinals reached sky-high levels, causing congestion on the worlds biggest blockchain and propelling its network fees to a 2-year high earlier this month. In addition, Binance said on May 9 it would add support for Bitcoin Ordinal inscriptions on its non-fungible token (NFT) marketplace in late May.

A big part of the Bitcoin community welcomed the introduction of the BRC-20 standard, as many wanted to join Ethereum proponents in issuing NFTs on their favorite blockchain. On the other hand, some have loudly criticized this idea.

These include the so-called Bitcoin purists, who believe Ordinal inscriptions enabled by the BRC-20 standard represent a departure from the original intent of Bitcoin, which was primarily meant to be used as a medium of exchange and a decentralized store of value. Moreover, purists also think that Ordinals have added elements of centralization and jeopardized the idea of Bitcoin being a decentralized, value-neutral currency.

As a result of their discontent, some Bitcoin developers have proposed to cancel Ordinals and BRC-20 tokens, which have been primarily responsible for the recent network bottleneck and mounting fees. Earlier this week, around 400,000 unconfirmed Bitcoin transactions in the mempool were waiting to be added to a block.

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About the author

Tim Fries is the cofounder of The Tokenist. He has a B. Sc. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Michigan, and an MBA from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. Tim served as a Senior Associate on the investment team at RW Baird's US Private Equity division, and is also the co-founder of Protective Technologies Capital, an investment firm specializing in sensing, protection and control solutions.

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OKX to Establish Bitcoin BRC-20 Industry Standard with Unisat - The Tokenist