The chip structure has changed drastically, and what happened to the Atomics protocol that has been in the trough for several months?
Written by: Jaleel , BlockBeats
In the past few months, Bitcoin has repeatedly hit record highs, and BRC20’s ORDI and SRC’s STAMP in the Bitcoin ecosystem have also broken new highs, showing remarkable performance. On the other hand, ATOM, the leader of the Atomics protocol with a high degree of halal, has been suffering from haze, the price continues to decline, and the mood of the holder community is not very good.
Although ATOM has successively landed on Unisat and OKX Web3 wallets, and has also been listed on trading platforms such as Gate and Bitget, ATOM has been on the rise since its high of $16 in December last year. Prices have been stumbling downwards. At the time of writing, 1 ATOM costs $6.478, and one ATOM costs $6,483. Based on its peak price of $16, ATOM has fallen 62% in the past 4 months.
How has the Atomicals ecology changed? How is the development of AVM going? BlockBeats wrote this article after in-depth conversations with several developers and enthusiasts in the Atomics community.
The ceiling of Atomicals
In the early days of Atomicals, almost no one discussed AVM.
Until this year, Arthur, the author of the Atomics protocol, had been working on the development of the "split" function. We have also observed that the price of ATOM tends to increase as split functionality progresses. It can be seen that community members who held positions early have high expectations for the split function. Under ideal planning, once ATOM is split, the transaction volume and the number of addresses will increase significantly, allowing for early access to the trading platform.
However, before the split, ATOM’s liquidity was like expensive NFTs or real mansions, and it was difficult for ordinary people to afford it, even now a single The price of ATOM is also as high as 6,000 US dollars, and there are only 2,000 holding addresses.
Although we can see that Gate, Bitget and OKX Web3 wallets have all launched ATOM in the past few months, first-line trading platforms like Binance and OKX Still not listed. Whether from the perspective of transaction volume or address holdings, first-line trading platforms seem to lack the motivation to quickly promote the listing of ATOM.
The shortest way may also be the farthest way
If it is so important, why is the split function still there? Failed to go online, but turned to AVM development?
Wizz Wallet is the earliest wallet in the Atomicals ecosystem and is currently the most frequently used wallet in the Atomicals community. They have very frequent private communications with the protocol author Arthur. Wizz Wallet CEO Brutoshi told BlockBeats that most of the "split" code has actually been launched for testing online The Internet is online, which can now be understood as a hold.
As for why the implementation of split was postponed due to the shift to AVM implementation, Brutoshi also gave his own understanding: "Before AVM, if we wanted to implement split You need to write a bunch of code logic in the indexer. Although doing the splitting function alone can solve the problem. But doing so will result in a huge and complicated code being written to death, and there will be a lot of maintenance, testing and promotion in the future. Both the wallet side and the market side require extra effort to support, which is very inelegant."
Each public chain or each protocol has its own pronoun. For the Atomics ecosystem, elegance, simplicity, lack of clutter, and halal are some of the keywords.
Both solutions are feasible. From the perspective of realizing holders’ benefits, implementing the split function separately may be the fastest solution. But this is not the best choice for the Atomics ecosystem that Arthur wants to build. What seems like the shortest way may also be the farthest way.
Arthur turned to the AVM implementation not because split functionality was unachievable, but out of the pursuit of a more elegant and concise solution. The advantage of this is that the energy spent by everyone in the ecosystem is not wasted on solving a single specific problem, but is applied to a wider range of general problems.
"AVM is programmable and has its own scripting language. If you split it, it can be solved with a piece of code." Brutoshi added. It can be said that after implementing AVM, splitting functions is natural.
Although the ceiling of AVM is very high, during the long gap period of these few months, more emphasis is placed on the need for rapid realization of liquidity and the failure to control position adjustments. The holders of , chose to leave the market first. In the crypto industry where liquidity is king, time is measured in multiples, and investors in the crypto industry tend to be more impatient.
"The user profiles of the big players who minted ATOM in the early days were very clear. Most of them were people who could understand technology and code. Most of the people who minted ATOM in the early days were from It’s ready.” The currency circle philanthropist is a fan of the Atomics ecosystem and is frequently active in the community. He told BlockBeats after long-term observation.
What exactly can AVM do?
Amidst the disagreements in many communities, AVM represents the ceiling of the entire Atomicals ecosystem, which has become a general consensus within the community. So, what can this AVM, which represents the ceiling of Atomics, do?
On December 13, 2023, Arthur, the author of the Atomics Protocol protocol, accepted an interview invitation from the Ordinal Revolution Podcast and shared Atomics in the interview room without showing his face. Protocol’s recent developments, as well as views on the Bitcoin ecosystem, etc.
In the interview, Arthur briefly introduced the Atomics Virtual Machine (AVM). As a Turing-complete virtual machine, AVM is capable of executing complex blocks. Various computing instructions required for chain applications, including enabling developers to create smart contract programs on Bitcoin and create unprecedented experiences.
Interview Room Screenshot
“With AVM, many possibilities become available, including implementing problems left over from previous history in a more elegant way.” Brutoshi said.
So, what possibilities can AVM create? According to Atomics community enthusiast @PunkOnChain on Twitter, the breakthrough points are: AVM will have an advanced execution environment that can handle smart contracts and dApps; a custom instruction set for enhanced performance to reduce Gas costs; optimized state transitions functionality, increasing parallel processing capabilities to improve throughput and scalability; enabling interoperability and cross-chain communication; and providing a developer-friendly interface.
For those friends who cannot understand the technical theory, you can simply understand it as: AVM will allow Atomics to have smarter brains and supercomputers capable of performing various tasks; a set of A special toolkit that makes complex tasks easier and less time-consuming; a very smart manager who keeps everything running smoothly; a translator who can communicate with other communities to make the Atomics system Communication with other systems is more convenient; and having an extremely practical tool book can help developers learn how to use AVM faster.
"There are many reasons why I am optimistic about ATOM, but the most important point is that I think ATOM's downward space is limited, and at the same time, ATOM's upward space is unlimited." Atomics Eco-enthusiast and cryptocurrency philanthropist said this to BlockBeats.
In his opinion, the market value of Long Er Atomics accounting for 10%-20% of Long Yi Ordinals is not excessive. After AVM was developed, the entire Atomics ecosystem The space has been expanded, at least it is comparable to Ordinals, and in the long run there is no upper limit. For an Atomicals that can issue both FT and NFT, coupled with the Realms system that allows users to attach their avatars, names and links to online profiles, once AVM is truly realized, the ceiling height will not be underestimated. .
"Behind closed doors"
In discussions surrounding AVM, we can also hear different opinions. Few community members have doubts about how Arthur implements AVM. And the most important question, when will AVM come online?
In some public messages, we caught some signals. Neeboo, CTO of Wizz Wallet, revealed at a Space event that the protocol authors expect to launch the first version of AVM around the time of the Bitcoin halving, that is, around late April.
On March 19, Atomics enthusiast 0xSea stated on social media that he had chatted with Arthur
This is a subjective point of view as to whether AVM is being developed behind closed doors. But it is undeniable that Arthur does prefer to hide himself behind the Atomics protocol compared to ordinary protocol founders.
Since announcing the design work of AVM in January, Arthur has not published any documents. Although he has successively revealed the AVM design concept on Twitter, Arthur has always No documents have been published, which makes community users a little worried. In contrast, Casey released the final implementation version of Runes on Github yesterday.
Neeboo said on Twitter Space in early March: "We have not yet seen the original design documents and some initial codes." However, according to Wizz Wallet BlockBeats revealed that Arthur would have regular meetings with them every once in a while, and Arthur’s exchanges with wallets and other infrastructure continued for a long time.
Each protocol has its own character, which largely depends on the character and values of the protocol author. Almost everyone who has come into contact with Arthur knows that Arthur has always called himself a scientist and technical researcher, and has never thought of profiting from it. During a meeting with Wizz Wallet, Arthur also made it clear that he had no financial needs when building the Atomics protocol.
Officially stated that Atomics has no team , no purpose, no practicality, no roadmap, no investment, nothing
Brutoshi said: "Arthur's structure and values are very similar to Satoshi Nakamoto." He added: "Once the versions of Atomicals and AVM are stable, he may disappear. He is fully prepared for this. From being anonymous at the beginning, he later used a mixer to participate in some exclusive interviews and voice conferences, We attach great importance to privacy protection."
This is also the reason why many community members have unconditional trust in Arthur. In addition to their recognition of his character and values, his Technical ability is also an important reason.
"At first, Arthur was inspired by Ordinals and wanted to implement some domain name-like functions on Ordinals. After trying for about two months, he felt that it was not possible and Ordinals could not support it. Then he thought about it and just started from scratch, and it took him about six months to redevelop the entire protocol. His technical ability is really strong," Brutoshi told BlockBeats.
Because Arthur's technical ability is indeed strong and he is also familiar with the Bitcoin protocol, according to Brutoshi, Arthur has participated in the development of mining pool projects and has a special liking for PoW, which is why the Atomicals protocol pioneered the BitWorks token issuance mechanism based on PoW.
Back to the criticism of some community members that the Atomicals protocol is "closed-door", after a recent regular meeting between Wizz Wallet and Arthur, Arthur seemed to realize this and updated the protocol's development progress and plans on social media yesterday. According to the official Atomicals Protocol Twitter, the goal is to allow the transfer of tokens with a dust limit of less than 546 satoshis. The update aims to address the BTC protocol's limit on the minimum transfer size, which was originally intended to avoid "spam attacks" on the Bitcoin blockchain. Since ARC20 uses a pure color coin scheme, it is also affected by this dust limit, making it impossible to transfer tokens smaller than 546 units.
The solution is to allow partial coloring of UTXOs, but not more than the total number of units in the UTXO, which complies with the principle of 1 coin ≥ 1 satoshi. This technical solution has three major advantages: first, at least 1 token unit can be sent, which effectively solves the community's main concerns about the protocol; second, it can significantly reduce the accidental destruction of tokens; and finally, it improves the flexibility and reliability of smart contracts through the Atomicals Virtual Machine (AVM). Neeboo said that it is necessary to add that "partial coloring technology is still expected to be implemented using contract capabilities in Arthur's plan, rather than adding rules directly to the indexer."
This protocol update is expected to be completed in a few weeks and will be synchronized with the release of the AVM. The Atomicals protocol has always maintained its commitment of 1 token = 1 satoshi (or more). After the update, the open source developer team will work on a beta version to steadily integrate the technology while ensuring that the industry has enough time to test and reach consensus.
The transformation of the main battlefield of chip structure
In the communication with BlockBeats, the philanthropist in the currency circle mentioned his investment insights on the chip structure: "The chip structure is the most important analysis angle, and the chip structure can determine the direction of the market. Before buying, you must think clearly about who will eventually hold these chips? When the chips flow into the hands of more powerful people, the market can really take off. If these chips are concentrated in the hands of scientists who minted them in the early stages, then the prospects for this project are not great."
In order to study ATOM’s position data and specific chip distribution, BlockBeats investigated the wallet addresses of the top 100 Atom holders in the Atomics Market.
Top ten in ATOM There are no holders based on "minting" in the holding address. Observing the top 20 ATOM holding addresses, we found that only the 12th-ranked address is "minted". Among the addresses ranked 20 to 30, only the address ranked 29 is "minted"; and between the top 30 and 40, there are no holders based on "minting".
Continue to observe, there are no holders based on "casting" among the top 40 to 50, and there are no holders based on "casting" among the top 50 to 60 , only the address ranked 59th is "minted", between the top 60 and 70, only the addresses ranked 63rd and 65th are "minted", between the top 70 and 80, only the address ranked 73rd The address is "minted", and there are no "minted" holders between 80 and 90. Finally, among the top 100 holders, only the 93rd address is "minted" .
Among the top 100 holders, there are 6 addresses that own ATOM through "minting". The number of holders based on "casting" has significantly decreased. This shows that early holders have reduced their holdings of ATOM or transferred their holdings.
Whether it is a "change of hands" or a "shuffle", it is obvious that ATOM's liquidity and market influence have changed significantly, and the main battlefield has begun to shift.
Looking back at ORDI, both price trends and community sentiment are very similar. "ORDI was really dead from June to September, no different from dead." A philanthropist in the currency circle recalled the situation at that time. The ORDI community at that time, like the ATOM community today, experienced many moments of suffering and emotional pessimism.
After being launched on the GATE trading platform in May 2023, the price of ORDI reached a previous high of approximately $25. However, in the four months since then, the price of ORDI has experienced a long period of downturn, falling to $2.86 in September 2023.
Until it was listed on Binance on November 7, 2023, the price of ORDI climbed above $50. Then after the passage of the Bitcoin ETF in January of this year, no one doubted that it was now a bull market, and the price of ORDI peaked again in March 2024, hitting an all-time high of $96.17.
The holders who can truly obtain the highest point of $96.17 from the initial minting of ORDI are definitely a minority among the minority, and can even be said to be rare. There are very few. Sluggish turnover periods are normal.
“But it is precisely because a consensus is formed and explosive power is gained in this process that the project can really take off. Those who lack confidence can leave the market as soon as possible. Sell as quickly as possible so more people have a chance to get on board,” Brutoshi said. "Different opinions lead to different investment decisions in Long Short. This is normal and healthy market behavior. Changing hands is a good thing."
Compared with ORDI's downturn In four months, it fell from US$25 to US$2.86, a drop of 88.56%. ATOM fell from $16 to $6 now, a drop of about 62.5%, which is not too high in comparison. Recalling last November, inscription was almost a "national sport". There were hundreds of inscription projects on various chains, but only a handful of them could truly "survive" to this day.
"From January this year to March now, the protocol authors have been studying AVM. It is definitely unrealistic to expect AVM to come out immediately and the price will rise. "Although the philanthropist in the currency circle has always suspected that someone is lowering the price of ATOM, he also admitted that there is a possibility that ATOM is not favored by capital. "But what I am sure of is that there will be room for differences in the market."
Disclaimer: The content of this article solely reflects the author's opinion and does not represent the platform in any capacity. This article is not intended to serve as a reference for making investment decisions.
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