BRC20 and Bitcoin DeFi in 2026

Stablecoins, AI Agents, RWAs, BTCfi, and Privacy on Bitcoin

On February 3, the BRC20 protocol was upgraded to support EVM smart contracts as inscriptions. BiS led this upgrade in collaboration with OKX, Unisat, domo, and Layer 1 Foundation.

The “2.0” upgrade changes the game fundamentally, not just for Bitcoin fungibles, but for the broader Bitcoin ecosystem. Smart contract logic can now be inscribed directly on Bitcoin, with Bitcoin itself acting as the data availability layer and the sequencer, without requiring any new BIPs or changes to Bitcoin itself.

BRC20 now has production-ready infrastructure for institutional grade financial applications, positioning Bitcoin as a global settlement rail for real world value flows.

As the protocol stewards, we are mainly focusing on 5 areas in 2026:

1. Stablecoins on Bitcoin

The first focus area is stablecoins. We are actively working to bring major stablecoin issuers onto Bitcoin L1 through native BRC20 issuance.

With programmable BRC20 and a native stablecoin, BTC can be traded truly peer to peer and trustlessly on Bitcoin itself, helping complete the foundation for a truly trustless Bitcoin based economy.

The stablecoin unlock goes further than trading. It is the foundational primitive that opens up borrowing and lending against BTC without leaving the Bitcoin network, and eventually the issuance of a trustless Bitcoin backed stablecoin and other synthetics.

We expect to see the first BRC20 stablecoin within 2 to 3 months, followed by a broader wave of issuers throughout the rest of the year.

2. AI Agents and Agentic Commerce on Bitcoin

The agentic era is approaching quickly. Possibly within 6 months everything will be much different than now.

Bitcoin will play a very critical role in the agentic era, not just as “BTC transactions for agentic commerce” but also for establishing canonical ordering of actions and events which agentic organizations and systems can reliably leverage.

With BRC20 and added smart-contract functionality, Bitcoin is ready to be the main ledger for this upcoming abundant new world.

BiS is also experimenting internally at the intersection of agentic systems and Bitcoin. This work is still at the experimental stage, and we expect to share more in the coming months.

3. RWA Issuance on Bitcoin

As Hal Finney wrote in 2010, Bitcoin can be more than a ledger for transferring coins. It can serve as a global, decentralized, and consistent base layer for other assets.

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Programmable BRC20 brings this idea much closer to reality.

Bitcoin can now serve as a global ledger for real world asset issuance, trading, and settlement.

Think gold, commodities and tokenized equities on Bitcoin L1.

There is already interest from multiple parties exploring RWA issuance on BRC20. Our infrastructure arm, BiS INFRA, is actively working with partners in this area, and we will share more as the first RWA issuers on Bitcoin move closer to launch.

4. BiS DEX & Liquidity Incentivization

In the coming weeks and months, we are releasing:

• ORDI pairs, with ORDI positioned as the fee token for ORDI denominated markets on BiS DEX.
• Stablecoin pairs.
• Fast orderbook x AMM hybrid trading for BRC20 assets, with buy side limit orders, combining the liquidity depth of an AMM with the precision of a central limit order book.

Our next phase, over the medium term, we are working on:

• BTC yield generation strategies.
• Borrowing and lending for BRC20 tokens.
• BTC backed stablecoin minting, with potential to include $ORDI and other highly liquid assets like $NUTKIN.

BiS DEX Token & Liquidity Mining Program

We are working on the tokenomics for the BiS DEX token — the native token of our BTCfi product suite.

In basic terms, the main distribution mechanism will be liquidity provision. Further details on how the token will be distributed will be explained in depth in a separate post.

As per request from various investor groups, we have also opened a new investment round. Instutional entities interested in an allocation can reach out to us.

5. Shielded BRC20 Transactions & Privacy

Privacy is a foundational requirement for financial systems, including confidentiality around balances, counterparties, and transaction amounts.

Our core BRC20 development team has been actively researching privacy features for BRC20. We are excited by the early results, which have already shown internally that transaction shielding for BRC20 assets is technically possible, although production implementation will take time.

We will share more details around this privacy initiative as our work progresses.

The Bigger Picture

BRC20 contributed 2% of miner revenue over the last three years, with more than $520M paid in transaction fees. The long-standing technical objections are no longer the main constraint: UTXO bloat has been addressed via OP_RETURN burns, and OPI serves as the canonical indexer across the BRC20 ecosystem.

The technical heavy lifting is largely complete. The next phase is about activation: stablecoins, RWAs, deeper liquidity, agentic commerce, and eventually privacy.

BRC20 is not a trust-minimized L2 narrative or wrapped BTC on another chain. It is the clearest path toward a truly Bitcoin-native on-chain economy.

BiS led the BRC20 programmability upgrade, and in 2026 our focus is clear: turning this new capability into real products, real liquidity, and real economic activity on Bitcoin.

Onwards,

— @0xBinari & BiS Team