After BRC-20, there will be ORC-20, who will be the king?

This article introduces the new ORC-20 token standard, discusses its differences from BRC-20 and its development prospects.

Written by: Teddy, Biteye Co-Founder; Kaishek, Biteye Core Contributor

With Gate.io listing $Ordi, Binance NFT market officials announced support for Ordinals transactions, OKX Web3 wallet announced support for BRC20, and BRC20 tokens have temporarily reached the peak of market sentiment.

At the same time, due to the limited naming of BRC20 tokens, constant double-spending attacks, simple token functions and difficult ecological development, etc., the ORC20 token standard came into being.

It has only been half a month since the standard was launched, and the minting volume has exceeded 250,000. Considering the wealth creation effect of BRC20 and the huge potential of the Bitcoin ecosystem, the new token standard naturally attracts attention.

So what is the difference between the ORC-20 standard and BRC-20? Will ORC-20 replace BRC-20 as the unified standard for issuing tokens based on the Ordinal protocol? We will come together in this article.

01 Ordinal token new standard, ORC20 launch

On April 30, 2023, ORC-20 was born. The purpose of ORC-20 is to remove some BRC-20 restrictions on token issuance and provide more functions for token issuance based on the Ordinal protocol.

BRC-20 (brc20 Ordinals) (dune.com)

As of May 17, 2023, half a month after the ORC-20 standard was launched, the number of inscriptions has exceeded 250,000, and the growth rate far exceeds the level when the BRC-20 standard was launched half a month ago.

02 Limitations of BRC20

1. After the first deployment of BRC20 tokens, the supply of tokens and the maximum amount of minting cannot be changed, which limits the development of tokens.

2. BRC20 token naming is limited to 4 digits.

3. BRC20's "Inscribe Transfer" and "bookkeeping" heavily rely on external centralized indexing services.

03 Difference between ORC20 and BRC20

The same thing between ORC20 and BRC20 is that both implement the token deployment standard similar to Ethereum ERC20 based on the Ordinal protocol in the Bitcoin ecosystem;

The difference is that ORC20 expands some functions of BRC20 and removes some restrictions to better meet the needs of project development. In general, there are 5 points:

1. Reduce the risk of double spending of BRC20 through UTXO

In each transaction, the sender specifies the amount the recipient receives and the remaining balance to send to the sender. Any send transaction that does not send all remaining balance is not a valid transaction.

Send transactions can transfer amounts to multiple recipients, and each send transaction (except self-transactions) must explicitly specify the amount to send.

The transaction is not complete until the remaining balance is sent back to the sender.

After each transaction is completed, the previously recorded balance will no longer be valid.

2. Token names are not limited to 4 characters and are not case sensitive

In the case that most of the BRC20 four-letter words have been minted in advance, the removal of character restrictions is in line with market demand. But it may also lead users to think that ORC20 tokens are not as scarce as BRC20 tokens.

3. Added the function of customizing certain keys to achieve more advanced functions

Among the custom Keys provided by ORC20, minter and tax are more eye-catching, among which minter is a special minting address, which can realize a function similar to a whitelist; tax can realize the function of the project party to collect transaction taxes and royalties.

4. Tokens can be upgraded, such as changing the max and limit of the token supply

This flexibility in token supply ensures that projects can use ORC20 to create more use cases, such as:

Gradually reduce the number of mints to increase the scarcity of tokens, such as simulating Bitcoin halving.

Increases the maximum supply and rewards community members with additional incentives.

Initially provide a special minting address to mint a portion of the tokens to transfer to the DAO treasury, then change the minting limit for the community to mint tokens.

5. Transaction can be canceled

Pass "op": "cancel" to cancel the transaction. At the same time, since ORC20 adds a nonce value to each transaction, canceling a transaction can cancel all transactions, or only part of the transaction (a transaction with a specific nonce value).

04 Advantages of ORC20

Compared with BRC20, ORC20 has four main advantages:

The first is to reduce the risk of double spending through the UTXO mechanism

Although BRC20 has a history of only two months, the double-spending problem has already occurred. For example, at the end of April, Unisat launched BRC20 as scheduled, but because of the double-spending problem, Unisat closed the trading market immediately, causing market turmoil. Therefore, the improvement of ORC20 to reduce double-spend attacks is of certain value.

The second is to make tokens more customized

For example, it supports setting the ticker with more than 4 characters, and also supports the use of some custom keys. For example, minter and tax can realize the functions of whitelist and tax collection respectively, which can allow the project party to have more ways to operate the community, and also allow the project party to obtain sustainable income and extend the project life cycle.

The third is upgradeable tokens

The upgradeable feature is helpful for the continuous operation of the project. For example, when the project was first established, there was no well-designed operation plan and public finance in advance, but in the later stage, the total supply of tokens can be modified to realize functions such as community incentives and DAO treasury.

The fourth is to support the upgrade of BRC20 inscriptions to ORC20 inscriptions

The upgrade process is irreversible and only deployers of the BRC20 inscription can proceed. This may attract some BRC20 inscriptions to ORC20 inscriptions, but ORC20 inscriptions cannot be converted to BRC20 inscriptions, and this may make the ORC20 standard more popular.

05 Disadvantages of ORC20

If the popularity of BRC20 is partly due to its minimalist design that is easy to spread in the community, then the complex design of ORC20 may bring complaints from many users.

For example, the project party can customize and add certain keys, which will make operations such as token casting and transfer more complicated, and users are prone to mistakes.

However, the feature that can be upgraded, that is, the quantity limit can be changed after the issuance of tokens, is to some extent the biggest disadvantage of ORC20.

On the one hand, it may make users feel that it has violated the spirit of the Immutable blockchain, and worry that there will be problems such as malicious additional issuance by the project party, rat warehouses, and running away;

On the other hand, the current BRC20 and ORC20 tokens are tokens with meme attributes, and most of the total amount of meme tokens is constant, focusing on deflation and destruction, but the upgradeable function may make the total amount of tokens more and more, users Concerns about inflation could slash meme coin consensus.

06 Will ORC20 replace BRC20

ORC20 and BRC20 have their own advantages and disadvantages, and have their own application scenarios. BRC20 is simple in design, immutable, and suitable for value storage and exchange.

The design of ORC20 is complex, rules can be designed and customized, and certain business logic can be realized. For example, BRC20 is more like Bitcoin, and ORC20 is more like Ethereum.

And if it is to compete with BRC-20 in the small circle of Ordinals, then the more important point of competition between the two is probably to attract the support of centralized institutions (to provide users with a more liquid trading market, better use of Tools and browsers, etc.), rather than just improving the token casting function, but ORC20 may be weaker than BRC20 in terms of winning the support of centralized institutions.

In general, due to the differences between ORC20 and BRC20, the possibility of ORC20 completely replacing BRC20 is very low, and both will exist in the Bitcoin ecosystem at the same time.

07 ORC Participation Methods and Tutorials

At present, ORC20 is in the early stage, only over-the-counter transactions, and the transfer is more complicated. Unlike BRC20, you must be very cautious when doing off-exchange transactions;

And mint is relatively simple, you can directly use Unisat's inscribe. Of course, it must be noted that the name of ORC can be repeated and can only be determined according to the ID. At the same time, the deployer can issue additional ones in the future.

For online mint tutorials, please refer to the link below:

08 Related Sites

1. List of ORC20 tokens:

2. Official website:

3. Official Twitter:

4. Dune Signs:

5. ORC common information (there are many useful ORC20 websites):

09 Summary

In general, ORC20 is further innovated on the basis of BRC20, so that the tokens issued based on the Ordinal protocol can have more gameplay and more convenient functions. At the same time, some custom key functions can obtain continuous income for the project party. It is beneficial to extend the life cycle of tokens and stimulate innovation (stimulate user transactions).

But from the user's point of view, the operation of ORC20 tokens may be more complicated; the risk of the project party running away and smashing the market becomes greater;

If the project party sets a royalty, the user needs to pay an additional fee during the buying and selling process, but for the user, I bought a token and not an NFT, so why do I need to pay a royalty.

In addition, the design of ORC20 can't help but make people confused. If it's just to achieve more token functions, why not use ERC20? After all, ERC20 is more decentralized.

As mentioned by Twitter KOL @xiyu, the purpose of BRC20 using json is to facilitate retrieval, and retrieval will inevitably use centralized services, which is also a natural drawback of other applications except nft in the current Ordinals ecosystem. And ORC20 is obviously aware of the disadvantages of using json, but has not made significant improvements.

Of course, it is unfair to directly compare ORC20, BRC20 and ERC20. The first two are attempts to build on the safest and longest blockchain of Bitcoin, and it remains to be seen whether they are sustainable.

In direct comparison with BRC20, ORC20 does not solve the centralization problem of BRC20, and the improvement of token functions may not be the focus of Bitcoin ecology, so it may be difficult to form a competitive advantage over BRC20, and it may become a supplement to the BRC20 standard in the future . At the same time, we should also pay attention to the support and attitude of centralized exchanges for both.