Recently, the OP_CAT protocol has made the Bitcoin ecosystem lively again, with Fractal Bitcoin mainnet transaction fees soaring. However, in stark contrast to this boom is the market's response.#以太坊 The 'outcry' of L2 has even sparked more serious discussions about whether the Ethereum roadmap needs to be changed. At the root of this debate is whether to prioritize the development of L2 execution over the development of L1 itself, leading to issues such as liquidity fragmentation and loss of L1 value capture.
However,#比特币 the ecosystem is not entirely prosperous, as it faces many issues that need to be addressed, similar to Ethereum. For example, limited transaction processing capacity, scalability, and insufficient smart contract functionality. Additionally, network congestion often leads to transaction confirmation delays and increased costs. Although solutions like the Lightning Network and sidechains exist, there is still no widely recognized Bitcoin scalability solution.
This dilemma also brings reflection to other crypto ecosystems. For the Bitcoin ecosystem, which is also vigorously developing L2, how to properly handle the relationship between L2 and Bitcoin itself is a major proposition. However, there is a project that does not want to be a Bitcoin L2, but rather seeks to leverage technological innovation to find a method that closely aligns with Bitcoin L1, connecting the Bitcoin network and its L2s.
What is exSat, the 'Docking Layer' innovation?
The Bitcoin ecosystem is currently experiencing a paradigm shift, gradually expanding from a purely financial asset to various DApps. However, Bitcoin's unique mechanism makes its ecological development progress relatively slow. With the halving event occurring, the business development costs in the Bitcoin ecosystem are also rising, forcing miners to upgrade infrastructure and seek additional income.
As mentioned earlier, the Bitcoin ecosystem currently has countless Layer 2 solutions poised to take off, but they will also face the same issues experienced by Ethereum. The launch of exSat is precisely to address these challenges and propose a Docking Layer solution. This new term may sound hard to understand at first, but in simple terms, it means that exSat will play a mediating role between the Bitcoin mainnet and various Layer 2s.
The emergence of such solutions is partly due to the poor earnings of miners and partly because the various Bitcoin L2 solutions have not achieved desired results.
Yves La Rose, one of the founders of exSat, believed in an interview that 'most so-called L2 solutions are not truly second layers, as their failure does not affect the Bitcoin mainnet, only the assets on their own network.' The lack of data transparency profoundly impacts the progress of the Bitcoin ecosystem. The mechanism design of exSat allows BTC miners to submit raw Bitcoin data directly to the network and receive rewards through token issuance. Thus, in solving the issues troubling the BTC L2 ecosystem, exSat also found a way to help Bitcoin miners regain profitability.
To achieve these goals, exSat is launching some technological innovations aimed at simplifying the development of new L2s and providing the necessary tools for existing L2s to promote closer collaboration within the ecosystem.
Combining multiple strengths, how will exSat exert its influence on the Bitcoin ecosystem?
The most important aspect of the crypto ecosystem is not to adhere to conventions, but to recognize problems and find ways to leverage existing technological foundations, utilizing available resources and innovative thinking to provide truly effective solutions.
POW+POS+RAM, the power of a hybrid consensus mechanism
POW relies on the hash power of Bitcoin miners, offering high levels of decentralization and trusted security, while POS verifies transactions through validators staking tokens, providing higher efficiency and scalability. exSat's consensus mechanism combines Bitcoin's PoW and PoS, requiring validators to stake both the native exSat token and BTC, forming a dual-token security system.
In terms of data, due to the relatively slow progress of Bitcoin network upgrades, exSat proposed the idea of mirroring UTXO data. If UTXO data can be mirrored into a decentralized state index, it can be utilized to drive smart contracts.
The idea of exSat has received support from the EOS Foundation, which established the exSat network foundation to provide initial funding through donations and community fundraising, reportedly exceeding $20 million. Additionally, technically, exSat has adopted convenient solutions, utilizing decentralized EOS RAM to provide data availability and creating a decentralized state data index system, thereby providing Bitcoin with a secure, transparent, and high-performance scalable foundation. In simple terms, it mirrors original Bitcoin data to the exSat network, using decentralized high-speed storage from EOS RAM, allowing Bitcoin assets to cross-chain to the exSat network.
RAM is a decentralized storage database that can store over 108GB of Bitcoin UTXO data. In July, the decentralized memory RAM leasing platform RAMS DAO was established on the EOS chain, aggregating 108GB of RAM, with a total value of approximately 140 million EOS, available for lease to the BTC Layer 2 network exSat. Users can earn BTC mining rewards after the exSat mainnet goes live.
If miners have generated blocks in the past 72 hours, they can push that information to exSat's validators. Validators operate under a POS mechanism to verify whether the information received from actual miners is correct, then write the data into RAM, achieving cost-effective and scalable ecological development. The hybrid consensus mechanism also significantly enhances the credibility of the data. Any existing or upcoming BTC L2 can choose to use exSat for settlement or data availability, thus reducing infrastructure costs.
The full-chain vision of exSat
The design that allows exSat to further complete its expansion function lies in its interactive interface being compatible with EVM, enabling the Bitcoin network to also support the operation of smart contracts, greatly expanding Bitcoin's application scope and flexibility, and allowing Bitcoin to find a place in a multi-chain world.
In fact, the on-chain ecosystem of BTC+EVM was already practiced in 2020, but the overall funds flowing into the Bitcoin ecosystem were relatively limited. On one hand, the innovation boom at that time took place on Ethereum, and on the other hand, Bitcoin's infrastructure was not robust enough to support a sufficiently large liquidity. However, with the approval of Bitcoin ETFs and the successive issuance of assets, many projects are now exploring how to create more use cases within the Bitcoin ecosystem from various aspects.
By introducing the Docking Layer and smart contract functionality, exSat transforms Bitcoin from a mere value storage tool into a core protocol currency that can seamlessly interact with other blockchains. Users can use Bitcoin for various cross-chain operations, such as lending on Ethereum, trading on Solana, and participating in governance on Polkadot—all achievable through exSat, enhancing Bitcoin's utility and offering users a richer experience.
To fulfill the full-chain vision, simply being EVM-compatible is not enough; a series of supporting infrastructures is also needed. Therefore, exSat also supports account abstraction, allowing for general gas fees for various assets, such as BTC, Ordinals, and other Bitcoin ecosystem assets. It can even pay gas fees for others, making it easier for developers and users.
Additionally, validators manage multi-signature escrow accounts through a threshold signature scheme (TSS) to handle deposit and withdrawal operations. During deposits, funds are transferred to the escrow account, and the exSat system automatically detects and processes transactions; withdrawals involve generating Bitcoin transactions through smart contracts, which validators sign and submit to the Bitcoin network.
The modular system design also allows exSat to advance further in building a full chain. exSat is supported by Antelope, a modular blockchain solution designed to enhance the Bitcoin ecosystem. By acting as the DA layer and settlement layer within the Rollup system, exSat not only simplifies the deposit and withdrawal processes but also provides higher trust guarantees for Bitcoin L2, significantly reducing development costs and resource consumption. Through this modular design, exSat enables developers to flexibly customize Bitcoin L2 solutions based on different needs, promoting further prosperity of the DApp ecosystem and laying a solid foundation for Bitcoin's future development.
In the long run, exSat promotes the active development of the Bitcoin ecosystem from two aspects. From the user's perspective, exSat provides a unified user experience for account and asset management, simplifying the experience with intent-based operations. For developers, exSat offers an abstract chain model supporting full-chain DApps, making DApp development easier.
Fair launch, the value selection and development potential of XSAT
Currently, exSat is still in the testnet phase, and the mainnet will be launched on October 23. The network launch is mainly divided into three phases: initialization, network launch, and XSAT staking. In the first phase, the exSat foundation will synchronize the historical data of the first 840,000 blocks as a snapshot to initiate network operations, with no incentive measures during this phase.
Subsequently, the exSat network officially began real-time synchronization of raw BTC block data and launched a mining reward mechanism. exSat chose to implement a halving cycle similar to Bitcoin's, with a total supply of its native token XSAT being 21,000,000 coins.
Staking of XSAT will start after the halving event. Before starting to stake XSAT, validators need to meet a minimum staking threshold of 100 BTC. Only those XSAT stakers whose staking amounts rank high and continuously meet the minimum 100 BTC staking threshold can become valid validators, participate in signing, and receive rewards.
For miners/pools, 'zero-cost staking BTC' can yield additional profits, while the incentive mechanism that promotes BTC ecological prosperity and value enhancement may drive 10%-20% of mainnet BTC staking. Currently, exSat has locked over 2,400 BTC, with 32 validators, accounting for 37.54% of the network's hash rate. On October 18, exSat officially announced cooperation with digital asset financial service platform MatrixPort, which will add $300-600 million in liquidity to exSat, likely creating a new record for BTC ecosystem's TVL.
The value of exSat is not only reflected in developer support and miner incentives; its infrastructure also brings rich functionalities to users. One of exSat's core goals is to promote intent-based full-chain DApps. Users holding $XSAT in the exSat wallet can access various applications while seamlessly using other Bitcoin L2s without the need for cross-chain bridges, signing multiple transactions, or dealing with multiple gas tokens—just select the desired operation, and exSat will automatically complete the task.
As activities increase on exSat and its partnered L2s, the demand for $XSAT will also rise. In addition, exSat adds value to its network through decentralized state data indexing, utilizing RAM to store Bitcoin block data. Since all projects using this indexing layer and other network components need to rent decentralized database storage space, the scarcity of RAM will increase as the number of projects grows.
For retail investors, current participation opportunities include staking mining, XSAT airdrops, and network incentives. In terms of token economics, exSat mimics Bitcoin's fair launch model, ensuring long-term stability and healthy development of the network through transparent supply and halving cycles. At the same time, the token economic model of exSat provides incentives for participants, encouraging them to contribute to the operation and development of the network.
Currently, exSat mainly focuses on three business aspects. First, it collaborates with Bitcoin mining pools to attract more hash power through data push. Second, exSat is recruiting validators, especially institutions and projects that can stake Bitcoin, to ensure data accuracy and security. Most importantly, exSat's core vision is to become a hub for other Bitcoin L2 solutions, providing transparent and decentralized support to L2 solutions without their own indexed data, promoting further development of the Bitcoin ecosystem.
