Fractal Bitcoin: Rapid Hashrate Surge and the Opportunities Behind the Hype

Fractal Bitcoin is a Bitcoin Layer 2 solution developed through a collaboration between the Unisats team, BSF, Uniworlds, and Asset Bridge. Fractal Bitcoin enhances transaction processing capacity and speed by recursively creating infinite scaling layers on top of the Bitcoin main chain using the BTC core code, while maintaining full compatibility with the existing Bitcoin ecosystem.

On September 9, 2024, the Fractal Bitcoin mainnet officially went live. Following the launch, a large number of mining machines connected to the Fractal Bitcoin network, and within just three days, the total mining hashrate reached 266.8 EH/s, ranking third among all POW networks.

Mining output and the price of FB tokens have become key topics of interest in the community, with participants carefully calculating costs, profits, and risks. This article will provide a comprehensive overview of Fractal Bitcoins mining rules, mining costs, and token economics to assess its potential returns and risks.

Token Allocation

Fractal Bitcoins native token is FB, with a total supply of 210 million. 80% is allocated to the community, and 20% to the team and contributors, with the specific distribution as follows:

PoW Mining (50%): Half of the total token supply is allocated to Proof-of-Work (PoW) mining.

Ecosystem Treasury (15%): 15% of tokens are reserved for the ecosystem treasury, dedicated to funding initiatives that enhance the Fractal ecosystem and provide resources for ongoing core improvements.

Presale (5%): 5% of tokens are allocated to presale for early investors and network participants. These funds are crucial for covering initial development and operational costs, as well as for conducting security audits to ensure network robustness. All presale tokens are locked for six months and will be released linearly over 12 months.

Advisors (5%): Another 5% is reserved for advisors who provide strategic guidance and support for the ongoing development of the Fractal network.

Community Grants (10%): 10% of tokens are reserved for community grants, intended for building partnerships and liquidity programs.

Core Contributors (15%): The remaining 15% of tokens are allocated to core contributors responsible for building and maintaining the Fractal core software.

Fractal Bitcoin previously announced a total airdrop of 1 million FB tokens to eligible UniSat and OKX Wallet users. Based on the token distribution, the initial circulating supply of Fractal is capped at 8.35 million tokens.

Mining Rules

Fractal employs a unique mining mechanism called “Cadence Mining,” where out of every three blocks mined, two are mined permissionlessly, and one block is merged-mined. Traditional miners can participate in merged mining, which accounts for one-third of the mining share, while permissionless mining takes the remaining two-thirds. Fractal does not implement a whitelist, allowing any device with hashrate to participate.

Assuming an average block time of 30 seconds, with 25 FB tokens rewarded per block, approximately 72,000 FB tokens can be mined daily.

Mining Costs

Due to the uniqueness of the mining mechanism, the costs are divided into two parts. For miners involved in merged mining, the cost is almost negligible. For those participating in permissionless mining, the costs are as follows:

With an average block time of 30 seconds and a reward of 25 FB per block, daily output is around 72,000 FB tokens. For 1 PH/s, a miner could expect to mine approximately 3.43 FB per day, or around 102.8 FB per month. Based on the current market price of leasing 1 PH/s (1 EH/s = 1,000 PH/s) at $3,000 per month, the FB price would need to exceed $29 for miners to break even.

However, given actual circumstances, including slower-than-expected block times and varying local electricity costs, mining costs may differ, meaning the above estimates should only be taken as a rough reference.

Based on an initial circulating supply of 8.35 million and a monthly output of 2.16 million tokens, FBs monthly inflation rate could reach an exaggerated 25.87%. This inflation estimate may be understated due to potential overestimation of the initial circulating supply and underestimation of the monthly output. Additionally, the complexity of calculating costs, especially due to mining machine rental prices and the unique mining model, could impact confidence in secondary market purchases.

What unique mining mechanism does Fractal Bitcoin use, where out of every three blocks mined, two are permissionless and one is merged-mined？

A) Proof of Stake Mining

B) Delegated Mining

C) Cadence Mining

D) Sequential Mining