Exclusive Interview with BRC-20 Creator Domo: The Ethereum "Traitor" Who Locked Himself Away for 48 Hours to Rewrite Bitcoin's History
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Exclusive Interview with BRC-20 Creator Domo: The Ethereum "Traitor" Who Locked Himself Away for 48 Hours to Rewrite Bitcoin's History
It's good that the future of BRC-20 won't depend on Domo, but we're not there yet.
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsInterview: Isabel Foxen Duke
Translation: @web3_golem, Golem from Odaily Planet Daily
Editor's note: In March 2023, Domo launched the BRC-20 token standard. Over the past two years, the Bitcoin ecosystem has fully experienced the ups and downs of the crypto industry—from obscurity and skepticism to mass popularity, then falling back into obscurity. The birth of BRC-20 was undoubtedly a landmark moment for the Bitcoin ecosystem. But who still stands by the Bitcoin ecosystem today? Who still believes in BRC-20?
On the second anniversary of BRC-20’s launch, Domo—the founder who has never before accepted public video interviews—granted an exclusive interview with Isabel Foxen Duke. He shared his journey in crypto, the story behind BRC-20’s creation, his thoughts on UniSat, and future plans for BRC-20. Below is the full translated transcript by Odaily Planet Daily. Enjoy!
Former Data Analyst, First Crypto Win During NFT Summer
Host: I'm thrilled you're here—it's your first video interview ever. We'd love our audience to get to know more about you. I heard that before Ordinals and BRC-20, you weren't really focused on Bitcoin. Is that true? What were you doing before getting involved with the Ordinals protocol?
Domo: Two years ago, I indeed wasn’t focusing much on Bitcoin. Like most people, it was the Ordinals protocol that brought me back to Bitcoin. Before that, Bitcoin just sat in my wallet fluctuating in value—I didn’t do anything with it.
I entered crypto relatively late, starting my journey in 2019, but wasn’t deeply involved. I mostly learned basic crypto knowledge through Reddit and YouTube. The real turning point came in summer 2020, when I was working in data science and discovered Ethereum’s DeFi innovations, especially projects like Uniswap.
The on-chain data was so clean that I could analyze it without spending hours cleaning it. So my first move was scraping Ethereum data and building a Telegram bot to track traders on-chain—turns out they were among the most profitable players during DeFi Summer.
Later, I poured my entire monthly salary into Bitcoin and Ethereum, but almost went broke. That’s when I realized real opportunities might only exist within native crypto ecosystems. Around January–February 2021, I found some highly valuable NFT Discord servers and used my on-chain data skills to capture alpha amid the NFT market frenzy. 2021 turned out to be a financially strong year—and a fun one.
But I kept looking for a way to join the industry full-time. In November 2021, I met someone in an NFT Discord who worked at a major crypto payments company. I joined them and led the team’s on-chain data analytics over the next few years—until I released the BRC-20 protocol.
The Birth of BRC-20: Inspired by Bitcoin Punks and .sats Domains
Host: Do you remember when you first heard about Ordinals?
Domo: I don’t recall the exact time, but probably around January 2023. At first, I didn’t act on it. It wasn’t until February that I saw it again and realized it had grown beyond a small group experimenting in their basements.
Early Ordinals collections played a key role in inspiring BRC-20. Take Bitcoin Punks—they essentially invented "fair launch" on Bitcoin since we couldn’t distribute via smart contracts.
Then came the .sats domains, which brought JSON-formatted data into Bitcoin’s mempool for the masses. When I opened my laptop at work and saw that, I thought: this is amazing—we’re taking another step forward. Ordinals wasn’t just an art protocol anymore; it could now serve as a data availability layer on Bitcoin.
The infrastructure was right there in front of us—you could build whatever you wanted. That’s when I started thinking: what else can we do? From that moment, I saw Ordinals as a gateway to Bitcoin’s data availability, accessible even to users without advanced technical skills.
Host: Did you collaborate with others or engage in community discussions before creating the BRC-20 protocol?
Domo: After seeing .sats domains using JSON on-chain, I came across a blog post by someone named “redphone.” He collaborated with Delphi Ventures on a pseudo-specification. I thought his design could work, though it lacked a few key elements—but it was definitely inspirational.
Then I locked myself in a room for two days and created the BRC-20 protocol. A big part of the credit goes to redphone. In the following days, I built a basic indexer with start dates and indexing logic—but it was the worst indexer ever made. It crashed within an hour of launch. Still, it proved the concept was viable.
It took me a while to figure out two things: the balance hierarchy (available vs. transferable balances), and how to prove ownership. Since anyone could inscribe and transfer tokens, anyone could also steal someone else’s balance. So I defined a spec with four core functions initially—deploy, mint, transfer, and trade.
Trade wasn’t launched at first because I thought adding complexity wasn’t necessary at that stage. I decided to defer solving that problem. Looking back, I think that omission was essential. One of my biggest takeaways was to keep things simple—that was a critical decision.
Host: So you launched the standard, deployed the first inscription, tweeted about it, and quickly gained attention. What happened in the week that followed?
Domo: I first deployed “ordi” as a test to validate the token spec. But actually, someone used the protocol before I even published the gitbook. Another token was deployed before I officially released the standard. When I saw that, I knew I had to publish it immediately.
About an hour after launching BRC-20, a friend DM’d me saying the experiment had failed. I barely slept that night. But I still believed ordi might be fully minted within 24 hours. People likely used inscription tools or the Ordinals client itself. At the time, I didn’t know who exactly built an indexer to track ordi transactions and balances.
Host: Why did BRC-20 spread so fast—within about 16 hours of your tweet, people were already building tools for it?
Domo: Previous innovations like .sats domains had already drawn attention from the core Ordinals community. So when something new emerged, they were eager to try it. Also, some spotted business opportunities in inscription tools—simple batch inscription tools could become cash cows. From a user perspective, everything aligned perfectly—timing, accessibility, and opportunity.
UniSat’s Contribution to BRC-20
Host: When did UniSat get involved in building for BRC-20?
Domo: UniSat originally started as an inscription tool. They probably launched their indexer in early April 2023. I don’t remember exactly how we connected—maybe I DM’d them, or vice versa.
At the time, I was getting tons of DMs, many from scammers telling me things like, “You should deploy ORDI into an Ethereum liquidity pool.”
What stood out about UniSat was that they’d already built practical tools and proven their technical strength. Their team came from the BSV community—like many early builders and Ordinals enthusiasts. I think the emergence of indexers also triggered a second wave of OTC trading, because now you could verify through intermediaries whether you actually received the asset instead of blindly trusting.
Host: So they volunteered independently—no formal collaboration between you?
Domo: I was really exhausted at the time, so I welcomed anyone willing to contribute voluntarily. UniSat was by far the most active and capable team. Other teams helped too, like Best In Slot—I’m grateful for their support.
I exchanged ideas with UniSat during indexer development, but I didn’t participate in building the UniSat marketplace. It wasn’t until they launched the BRC-20 marketplace at the end of April that we finally got reliable pricing data. That might’ve been the first time I truly started paying attention to price, since OTC trades were usually unreliable.
Feeling the Pressure After BRC-20 Went Viral
Host: Did you feel pressure after BRC-20 blew up?
Domo: Yes, it was stressful. Even after building the indexer, there were still many voices on Twitter claiming it was technically flawed or ideologically wrong from a Bitcoin purist standpoint.
Before BRC-20, I was an “Ethereum person,” with no real connections in the Bitcoin community like I had in Ethereum. Frankly, I didn’t know much about Bitcoin back then. My view of the Bitcoin community was shaped by Satoshi’s ideals—open access, freedom, fairness. So I asked myself: how can I reflect these values of fairness, freedom, and openness in this experiment? That thinking ultimately led to several decisions—including fair minting—which I believe were key to its success.
Still, the negative comments affected me deeply. Some asked me what I’d improve if I could recreate BRC-20. But to me, BRC-20 was a one-in-a-million success. Changing any design variable might have flipped the outcome entirely. BRC-20 is indeed a very inefficient protocol—we can improve it, but blind improvements carry risks.
I’m glad I didn’t follow many of those suggestions. We chose a slow, iterative improvement path because I believe only well-tested ideas can sustainably enhance the protocol. Rushing would’ve just been a temporary fix.
No Prior Knowledge About Exchange Listings
Host: Before ORDI was listed on centralized exchanges like OKX, were you involved in the listing process? Did you know what was coming?
Domo: Actually, I wasn’t involved. Except for Gate—they sent me a DM beforehand, but by the time I woke up, it was already listed. All I can say is that certain factors likely contributed. From an exchange listing perspective, 2023 was a unique year—nothing exciting happened early on, PEPE was just a flash in the pan. BRC-20 became the dominant narrative, so listings made perfect sense.
Also, most assets held by exchanges were Bitcoin. I assumed that if Bitcoin left their platforms and moved to on-chain trading via UniSat or other markets, liquidity bubbles would form. To address that, exchanges had no choice but to list these assets and build tools around them.
BRC-20’s Path Toward Decentralization: A Future Without Domo Is Good—But Not Yet
Host: While UniSat’s indexer became mainstream, Best In Slot also built one. Can you share how they got involved, what problems they aimed to solve, and how they approached BRC-20 indexing differently?
Domo: I met Best In Slot at a conference in Singapore in September 2023, and possibly again in Miami—I don’t recall exactly—but we’d been talking for a while. They told me they’d built an indexer and had strong technical backgrounds from Ethereum, with indexing as their specialty.
I was excited to see a serious competitor interested in BRC-20 indexing because there was growing concern about centralization. We needed a coalition of multiple indexers. That’s why we later developed OPI—an even more decentralized client that anyone can easily run.
Host: When Casey made major upgrades to the Ordinals protocol, how did it affect BRC-20 indexers, and how did you respond?
Domo: My top priority was security. Some proposed upgrades didn’t improve the protocol and introduced risks. Ultimately, due to poor communication, the indexer debate caused chaos. But UniSat compromised. I’m grateful for everyone’s cooperation—everyone agreed that any form of fork would harm the community’s best interests. We found a solution that balanced everyone’s needs.
To prevent similar issues in the future, we founded the Layer 1 Foundation. Its main purpose is to establish governance rules so we can handle such decisions more intelligently going forward. Both UniSat and Best In Slot are key maintainers of this foundation, collaborating closely.
I’m very satisfied with this outcome. Open-source protocols should evolve this way—over time, the founder’s ideas aren’t necessarily the best. Progress comes from better technology, greater experience, and more contributors dedicated to the protocol. I see myself more as a coordinator now. In the future, Domo may no longer be part of BRC-20—that would be a good thing. But clearly, it’s not the right time yet.
BRC-20 Swap Module and Programmable Module
Host: You've been discussing two major protocol upgrades over the past 8–9 months: the swap module and programmable module. Can you explain what they are?
Domo: The swap module traces back to summer 2023. We realized we weren’t trading these assets like fungible tokens but more like NFTs. Any reasonable protocol would aim to improve that UX—that’s why the swap module emerged. Initially, we mistakenly thought such clear-cut technical solutions weren’t feasible, but UniSat and Fractal Network later proved the experience works well.
People often refer to “UniSat swap,” but the module isn’t exclusive to UniSat—any team can deploy a swap module and adopt the tokens.
I discussed the programmable module at a Bitcoin summit in Taiwan in 2023. If they can solve Bitcoin compatibility issues—like binding data to Bitcoin using UTXOs—it would be meaningful.
I believe programmable protocols will ultimately win in the market. Two years later, we’re still trading BRC-20 tokens like NFTs, which delivers a poor user experience. A Solana degen coming to Bitcoin might want to go straight back to Solana. We must adapt to the market—that’s why I’m interested in the programmable module.
Right now, my top priority is ensuring BRC-20 assets survive. The programmable module and our ongoing research into “Single Step Transfer” could help BRC-20 integrate better with other ecosystems. This way, users won’t be stuck on a single chain. New assets can become interoperable objects rather than being limited by the standard itself.
Host: Can the programmable module solve interoperability issues between BRC-20 and other protocols like Runes? Or do we still need L2s? What’s your take?
Domo: There are various solutions now—centralized bridges, L1.5 layers, or L2s. Interestingly, in the Bitcoin space, everyone makes trust assumptions—whom should we trust? But from an industry perspective, we need to understand different user needs. For example, if you’re a Bitcoin whale, only a few protocols like Babylon might meet your standards.
But if you’re a degen, you won’t care—you’re used to centralization and just hunting for alpha. I don’t know how this interoperability game will end, but I believe it’s still necessary.
Host: Do you think BRC-20 has an advantage over other protocols developing programmability?
Domo: If BRC-20 does nothing, the most likely scenario is that some programmable protocol emerges and dominates the market, leaving BRC-20 unable to compete due to lack of interoperability. But if BRC-20 embraces programmability, it has a chance to regain attention—though success isn’t guaranteed.
BRC-20’s Single Step Transfer
Host: As a builder, what issues do you hope the community focuses on solving?
Domo: I think many people focus too narrowly on immediate concerns, overlooking many exciting developments in the Bitcoin ecosystem. For instance, in several months or a year, Bitcoin VM bridges might unlock massive yield opportunities akin to DeFi. If I were a builder, that’s where I’d focus. Looking back at early Ordinals days, being part of this industry was joyful—people respected each other and were optimistic. I hope we can return to that spirit.
Host: You’ve mentioned “Single Step Transfer” multiple times—is this something BRC-20 users are eagerly anticipating?
Domo: Single Step Transfer abstracts away wallet complexity and solves Bitcoin’s UTXO count issues. It won’t just improve UX—it’ll make BRC-20 much easier to integrate with other systems. Current cross-chain bridge designs are still too complex for average users. With Single Step Transfer, sending UTXOs feels more like a simple bridge lock. We’re even exploring Lightning channel integration—but I don’t want to make promises yet.
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