These Crypto Exchanges Will Support the Upcoming Bitcoin Jubilee Upgrade

Several crypto exchanges have joined the Bitcoin Ordinals solutions provider, UniSat Wallet, to support the upcoming BRC-20 Ordinals Jubilee upgrade amid growing friction within the BTC community.

According to an official announcement, KuCoin will be among those. The exchange’s decision comes within 24 hours after OKX informed the crypto community about its support as well. Both platforms will suspend deposits and withdrawals of BRC-20 tokens by 10:00 am UTC on January 5, to resume when the network has stabilized after the upgrade.

The Ordinals Jubilee Upgrade

The upcoming Ordinals Jubilee upgrade is set to address the issue of cursed inscriptions, which received negative numbers because they were not indexed and recognized by the Ordinal protocol.

Since cursed inscriptions are unrecognized by Ord’s first version, the Jubilee upgrade seeks to reclassify them by giving them positive numbers. The upgrade would also enable the development and governance of the protocol.

The Jubilee upgrade is scheduled at the block height of 824,544, which should be mined between January 5 and 6. However, the potential effects of the upgrade on the BRC-20 network sparked a dispute in the Bitcoin developer community over concerns about the token standard diverging into an isolated framework.

A Split Community

The BRC-20 token standard was created on the Ordinals protocol, but the network may be frozen at its current 0.9 version while Ord upgrades to Jubilee. According to UniSat, the development is considered a “split” rather than a “fork,” as the upgrade would diverge the networks into different sets with different rules residing on the same blockchain.

The Ordinals solutions provider, which doubles as a marketplace, has taken it upon itself to ensure the BRC-20 network does not split from Ordinals after the upgrade, deviating from an initial agreement with other parties to reject the proposal.

On the other hand, the pseudonymous BRC-20 founder, Domo, accused UniSat of plotting a strategy to gain control of the protocol, highlighting the risks of integrating new updates into the token standard without robust testing and coordination.

Domo urged the crypto community to reject UniSat’s proposed fork and instead stand with a non-profit and safety-first approach brought by the Layer 1 Foundation, which is dedicated to securing funds held within BRC-20 assets.

The Resolution

In a surprising turn of events, Domo, UniSat, and all affected parties have reached a solution for the community debate over the upgrade and its impact on BRC-20.

In a Thursday tweet, Domo disclosed they would be adopting the Ord 0.14 version, meaning BRC-20 will follow the Ordinals upgrade and no longer be split from the protocol, while Vindications proposed by Ordinals creator Casey Rodarmor will be temporarily ignored.

In addition, the teams will handle extreme cases raised in the Vindication PR and disregard issues related to encoding and delegation.