Developers of the Bitcoin side-chain MicroVisionChain (MVC) have revealed plans to launch a BRC-20 decentralized exchange (DEX) in the first quarter of 2024. MVC aims to establish a “1:1 mapping relationship” with Bitcoin on its sidechain, creating a parallel version of Bitcoin assets, such as BRC-20 tokens, on the MVC sidechain. This enables users to swap BRC-20 token assets on the sidechain, avoiding the high transaction and gas fees associated with decentralized applications (DApps) on the Bitcoin mainnet.
According to MVC Chief Operating Officer Jason Kwok, MVC shares the same underlying architecture as Bitcoin, allowing users to use the same mnemonic phrases and receiving addresses across both networks, enhancing user-friendliness. In keeping with the ethos of Bitcoin’s creator, Satoshi Nakamoto, MVC operates as a collaborative effort involving multiple development teams within the Bitcoin ecosystem, without specific founders or a corporate headquarters.
BRC-20 tokens, introduced by Web3 developer Rodarmor, have gained popularity for their technological advancements, allowing unique digital assets on the Bitcoin blockchain. MVC’s market cap for its governance token, MVC, has surged to over $400 million in 2023.
As part of MVC’s 2024 roadmap, the project is working on a meta-contract integrated development environment (IDE) to enable the migration of DApps from the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) to MVC’s Bitcoin sidechain. The meta-contract IDE can compile TypeScript, a high-level language, into the low-level op_code language on MVC, a crucial step in the development of MVC smart contracts and the expansion of BVM (Bitcoin Virtual Machine) DApps.
BVM aims to integrate Turing-complete smart contract functionality into the Bitcoin architecture by adding additional OP_CODES and redefining the method of generating underlying transaction IDs. Developers Trustless Market, a Uniswap v2 fork, is adopting this process, enabling $500,000 worth of swaps in its initial three days.
Kwok highlighted that while current layer-2 solutions like the Bitcoin Lightning Network address scalability and low fees, they cannot onboard Bitcoin into the broader decentralized finance (DeFi) ecosystem. MVC seeks to provide a solution, allowing Bitcoin ecosystem applications to add support for MVC without extensive additional development.