Celebrating 3 Months of Fractal: A Journey of Innovation and Growth 🚀

Written By Carylyne Chan

On September 9, 2024, we launched Fractal on mainnet, embarking on an ambitious journey to scale Bitcoin while preserving its core principles. Today, as we celebrate our three-month milestone, we're thrilled to share the incredible progress we've made and announce several exciting developments that will shape the future of Bitcoin scaling. As Bitcoin's innovation playground, Fractal has emerged as a powerful force in expanding what's possible within the Bitcoin ecosystem.

The Numbers Speak Volumes 📊

In just three months, Fractal has emerged as a powerhouse for Bitcoin innovation. With over 2.6 million active users and approximately ~60% of Bitcoin's hashrate engaged in merged-mining Fractal, our ecosystem has grown beyond our expectations. This remarkable mining participation, including major pools like Antpool, F2Pool, ViaBTC, and Binance Pool, demonstrates the industry's confidence in our approach to scaling Bitcoin.

The protocol activity on Fractal spans across multiple native protocols, such as Ordinals, BRC-20, Runes, and CAT (Covenant Attested Token protocol).

And as of block height 263787 on December 9, 2024, more than 1.02 billion transactions have been processed on Fractal.

Our unique Cadence Mining approach, combining merged-mining with permissionless mining, has created a robust and decentralized security model that builds upon Bitcoin's foundation while enabling faster block times and greater scalability. See more on the Fractal explorer.

Supporting Our Builders 🏗️

The heartbeat of Fractal lies in our vibrant builder community. We believe in rewarding actual impact rather than promises, which is why our grants program focuses on retroactive funding for projects that demonstrate real-world value. We're proud to announce our Season 2 Ecosystem Grant recipients:

  • Shell Finance: Pioneering native stablecoins for seamless Bitcoin trading, leveraging Fractal's scaling capabilities to enable efficient, decentralized stable assets.

  • Explorer by BtcTerminal: Enhancing visibility and transparency for users and developers, providing crucial infrastructure for ecosystem growth.

  • Ordbit: Creating a marketplace hub for creators and collectors, showcasing the potential of Bitcoin-native NFTs and digital assets.

Each project receives 5,000 FB to fuel their innovation, with submissions remaining open until December 15th for this season. Apply now: https://forms.gle/Kq5HzkxDSHp4Z9w4A

This commitment to supporting builders reflects our belief that Bitcoin's future lies in its ability to support diverse applications while maintaining its core principles. Read more about this Season’s Grants.

Innovation Showcase: Pushing the Boundaries 💫

Our ecosystem has attracted remarkable projects that push the boundaries of what's possible on Bitcoin, demonstrating the power of Fractal's approach to scaling and innovation:

  • SatWorld: Building an innovative decentralized avatar platform that merges Ordinals, Runes, and CAT20 into immersive 3D experiences, showcasing the potential for rich media and interactive applications on Bitcoin.

  • GeoMarks: Pioneering Soulbound Tokens using CAT721, revolutionizing digital identity through non-transferable NFTs — a first for the Bitcoin and Fractal ecosystems.

  • Gaze Network: Making Runes accessible through their Telegram minting bot, demonstrating how Fractal can support user-friendly interfaces for token operations.

  • SatsPumpFun: Leveraging OP_CAT for automated rewards distribution, showcasing the advanced capabilities enabled by Fractal's support for enhanced Bitcoin scripting.

  • CAT Protocol: Driving innovation with CAT20 and CAT721, with SDK and docs now available for developers.

… and many, many more excellent projects!

Additionally, Fractal collaborated to run two hackathons in Bangkok and India, seeing an incredible 24 project submissions. Fractal continues to ensure that builders can onboard quickly and easily, shipping projects in just one weekend — or sooner!

Going forward, Fractal will be sharing ecosystem news regularly, highlighting the achievements and updates from the teams building the future of Fractal and Bitcoin right here with us. 🗞️

Enhanced Transparency and Governance 🔒

Trust through transparency isn't just a slogan — it's a fundamental principle we're building into Fractal's foundation.

Starting December 2024, we will be going beyond the disclosure of wallet addresses to actually timelocking these funds over 10 years.

  • We're implementing timelocks (using the OP_CLTV opcode) for the Ecosystem Treasury & Community Grants, ensuring unprecedented transparency and trust.

  • These tiered timelocks over 10 years will secure the funds, ensuring that the funds cannot be moved before their time. Up until the specified block heights, these funds will not be accessible to anyone.

  • A maxmium of 10% of the total funds will be disbursed per year, in accordance with the Fractal Tokenomics as previously documented.

  • This ten-year tiered timelock system provides certainty and verifiability for treasury movements, viewable in real-time on-chain.

This innovative approach to treasury management demonstrates our commitment to building sustainable, trustless systems that align with Bitcoin's values.

Users can verify treasury movements independently, ensuring complete transparency in how ecosystem resources are managed and distributed. See it for yourself at treasury.fractalbitcoin.io.

Major Partnerships and Integrations 🤝

💵 WSPN Partnership

We're excited to announce our partnership with WSPN to bring WUSD, a fully-backed, regulated stablecoin to Fractal. This collaboration leverages Fractal's scaling capabilities to enable:

  • High-volume transaction processing

  • Seamless global payments

  • Enhanced DeFi capabilities on Bitcoin

  • 1:1 USD backing with high-quality liquid assets

👶 Babylon Integration

Our collaboration with Babylon, Bitcoin's leading staking protocol with $2B+ TVL, marks a significant milestone in simplifying Bitcoin staking. Through integration with UniSat mobile wallet, users will enjoy:

  • Native BTC staking capabilities

  • Seamless Cap 3 participation

  • Single-address convenience

  • Future Babylon rewards bridging to Fractal, directly in your wallet

Growing the Fractal Ecosystem 🌱

We're expanding Fractal's reach and utility through multiple channels:

👐 Seamless Entry Points

  • Credit card support via Alchemy Pay enables direct FB purchases

  • Upcoming UniSat wallet integration with Alchemy Pay further streamlines the user experience

  • BingX, Gate.io, and Bybit (Perpetuals), and more now offer FB trading

🔁 Trustless Trading with DeTrading

The groundbreaking atomic swap protocol by DeTrading launches this December, offering:

  • True trustless trading without counterparty risk

  • Direct BTC-FB swaps secured by cryptographic adaptor signatures

  • Time-locked refund paths for safety

  • Market maker support for instant liquidity

  • Access to $2T+ of BTC liquidity

Community Engagement 🎉

Our community remains at the heart of everything we do.

Fractal Potato: The First Vote 🍟

The first Fractal Vote saw remarkable participation with over 85,000 voters weighing in on which potato type best represents Fractal.

More than 50% of the community voted for French Fry — elegantly representing Fractal's core innovation of recursive scaling. Just as a stack of fries recursively builds upwards and around, Fractal creates infinite scaling layers on Bitcoin, each layer maintaining the security and functionality of the base layer while enabling greater throughput and capabilities.

This community-chosen symbol perfectly captures our technical architecture in an accessible, memorable way.

The French Fry sticker is now available on Discord and Telegram. You can explore the French Fry sticker and dive deeper into our growing potato lore.

In-person Events

We're also strengthening our community bonds through in-person events:

  • December Social in Hong Kong co-hosted with OKX and UniSat

  • Major presence planned at Satoshi Roundtable, Consensus, and ETHDenver in February 2025

  • Regular community meetups, builder showcases, and hackathons

Looking Ahead 🚀

As we celebrate these three months, we're already preparing for an exciting future.

Get Ready for a Magical Christmas with Fractal 🎄

As we approach the holiday season, we're preparing to launch our biggest community initiative yet! This festive celebration will feature substantial rewards, exclusive Potato-themed collectibles, and many exciting surprises from across the Fractal ecosystem. Look forward to special events, challenges, and opportunities to earn unique rewards while celebrating the holiday season with fellow Fractal enthusiasts.

Thank You ❤️‍🔥

Fractal is more than just a scaling solution — it's a movement to expand Bitcoin's possibilities while staying true to its fundamental principles.

The journey of scaling Bitcoin is just beginning, and we're honored to have such an incredible community joining us on this path. Together, we're not just scaling Bitcoin — we're reimagining its potential and making history.

Thank you for being part of our story. Let's continue building the future together! 🌟

With gratitude,
The Fractal Core Contributor Team 🧡

Carylyne Chan
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9 Things We're Grateful For: A Letter from the Fractal Core Contributor Team