Beyond ERC-20: Top 11 BRC-20 Tokens Worth Watching

The world’s first blockchain network, Bitcoin (BTC), was created with the goal of providing secure and anonymous digital asset storage and transfers. At the time of Bitcoin’s launch in January 2009, there was never an assumption that the network would need to handle anything more sophisticated. The arrival of Ethereum (ETH) and other smart contract chains a few years later drastically changed the expectations of what blockchains should be capable of. Concepts like decentralized apps (DApps) and non-fungible tokens (NFTs) emerged as new use cases for blockchain technology.

Unfortunately for Bitcoin, its core functionality was poorly suited to handle such innovations. Within the NFT domain specifically, Ethereum, Solana (SOL) and other big smart chains quickly became home to thousands of NFTs and managed to establish thriving NFT trade mechanisms. Until early 2023, Bitcoin was left out of these developments, shunned by developers and creators alike under the assumption that no NFT functionality was possible on the network. 

That all changed with the arrival of the Bitcoin Ordinals protocol, which allows Bitcoin users to create native NFTs on the Bitcoin chain. Soon afterward, inspired by the Ordinals protocol, the BRC-20 experimental token standard was also introduced, designed to enable semi-fungible tokens on the blockchain.

BRC-20 tokens are now taking the market by storm, featuring some of the highest growth rates in the industry. In this review, we take a look at 11 popular BRC-20 tokens — the true movers and shakers in this niche. The market caps and trading prices we’ve indicated for each token are as of Jan 3, 2024.

Key Takeaways: