1. Bitcoin’s Long-Term Core Proposition: Who Will Pay for Bitcoin Network Security in the Future?
Over the past several years, market attention has focused on Bitcoin’s price volatility, ETF developments, halving cycles, and bull-bear market transitions. However, the true long-term issue at the core of Bitcoin has always been:
When block subsidies continue to decline, who will continuously bear the cost of maintaining network security?
This is the essence of the “Bitcoin Security Budget.”
Bitcoin’s security foundation comes from miners continuously investing in ASIC machines, electricity resources, and operational costs. Miner revenue follows a clear formula:
Miner Revenue = Block Subsidy + Transaction Fees
Bitcoin’s irreversible halving mechanism means its security model must gradually transition from “inflation-driven security” to “fee-driven security.” Nearly every major evolution within the Bitcoin ecosystem over the past decade has fundamentally revolved around this core proposition.

2. Bitcoin’s Deep Contradiction Over the Last Decade: The Natural Conflict Between Low Fees and High Security
Bitcoin has long faced an irreconcilable contradiction:
Users seek low fees, low-cost transfers, and efficient payment experiences, while miners require high fees, scarce block space, and stable security budgets to cover operational costs.
The demand for low fees naturally conflicts with long-term network security. This underlying contradiction is the root cause behind the emergence of the Block Size War, Lightning Network, Ordinals, Rollups, DMT/NAT, and eventually the BIT Protocol.

3. Ordinals: The First Activation of Bitcoin’s Block Space Economy
The value of Ordinals has never truly been about NFTs or inscriptions themselves. Its real significance lies in proving, for the first time, that Bitcoin block space can be repriced by the market.
After the emergence of Ordinals, NFTs, inscriptions, BRC20 tokens, and on-chain data storage applications began competing aggressively for Bitcoin’s limited block space. The direct result was severe block congestion, soaring transaction fees, and dramatically increased miner revenues. In some blocks, fee revenue even exceeded the block subsidy for the first time in Bitcoin’s history.
The milestone significance of Ordinals is that the source of Bitcoin’s security budget is no longer limited to traditional payment scenarios. Data storage, NFTs, Rollups, Data Availability (DA), financial activities, and block ordering rights can all become sources of security budget demand.
Ordinals officially opened the era of the Bitcoin Block Space Economy. However, it also exposed major weaknesses: the fee market remained highly unstable, cyclical, speculative, and emotionally driven. The market gradually reached consensus that Bitcoin cannot rely solely on short-term fee manias; it must build a long-term, stable, and sustainable security revenue system.
The TAP Protocol is essentially an independent asset protocol standard forked from the Ordinals Protocol/BRC20 inscription ecosystem. Ordinals introduced sat numbering and inscription capabilities, BRC20 initiated the earliest inscription asset experiments, while TAP attempted to reconstruct more complex asset logic, state mechanisms, and protocol extensibility. It represents one of the post-BRC20 protocol branches and reconstructions.

4. Bitmap: The First Definition of Bitcoin Native Spatial Assets
Bitmap’s historical positioning is critically important. Its core value was never about creating NFTs, but rather advancing the assetization of Bitcoin block space.
Bitmap was the first to make the market realize that Bitcoin blocks themselves are native digital land. It fundamentally redefined the asset attributes of blocks, sats, and block space.
Before Bitmap, Bitcoin blocks merely served accounting functions. After Bitmap emerged, blocks gained spatial value, coordinate value, and native land properties, becoming a foundational starting point for Bitcoin’s native economic system.

5. DMT/NAT: The First Definition of Bitcoin-Anchored Security Assets
If Bitmap defined Bitcoin’s spatial value, then DMT (Digital Matter Theory) and NAT defined Bitcoin’s security value for the first time.
The core logic of DMT is that Bitcoin’s Proof-of-Work (PoW), block data, global hash difficulty, and energy consumption together constitute a form of “digital matter.” Bitcoin’s security itself possesses natural properties of assetization and financialization.
The milestone significance of NAT is that it transformed “security budget” from a theoretical discussion into a market narrative by introducing the concept of a “second miner subsidy.” Miner income would no longer rely solely on BTC block rewards and transaction fees, but could also receive additional NAT incentives.
The miner revenue formula thus evolved into:
BTC + Transaction Fees + NAT
This marked the first attempt in Bitcoin’s history to directly tokenize miner security income. As a Bitcoin Security Asset, NAT officially initiated the assetization of Bitcoin’s security budget.

6. DMT/NAT Facing Criticism from the Bitmap Community: Not Competition, but Dimensional Evolution
In the early days, many within the Bitmap community criticized DMT/NAT, calling it a Bitmap copycat, opportunistic hype, and a repackaged scam narrative. Social platforms such as X, Telegram, Discord, and online communities were flooded with accusations of fraud and plagiarism.
Looking back now, however, the two were never in the same category nor in direct competition:
Bitmap defines Bitcoin’s spatial value.
DMT/NAT defines Bitcoin’s security value.
Their evolution represents Bitcoin’s native economy upgrading from the “spatial layer” to the “security layer,” rather than a simple rivalry.

7. BIT Protocol: From Security Assets to Security Protocols
The core value of the BIT Protocol is the protocolization of the Bitcoin Security Budget.
NAT’s core proposition:
Can miners receive a second subsidy?
BIT’s core proposition:
Can all ecosystem participants collectively pay for Bitcoin security?
BIT is no longer limited to a single token. Instead, it aims to build a complete infrastructure including:
• An open security trading market
• A sustainable miner incentive system
• Cross-ecosystem security sharing mechanisms
In the future, any on-chain protocol may independently choose to:
• Purchase network security from miners
• Bid for scarce block space
• Pay for transaction ordering rights
• Lease Bitcoin’s underlying security capabilities
The miner revenue formula further expands into:
BTC + Transaction Fees + X1 + X2 + ... + Xn
BIT officially upgrades Bitcoin into a Bitcoin Security Protocol layer, marking the beginning of the protocolization era of Bitcoin’s security budget.

8. The Conflict Between NAT and BIT: From Single Narrative to Infrastructure Evolution
The NAT community once viewed NAT as the exclusive security asset. However, the emergence of BIT separated “security budget capability” from a single token narrative and transformed it into an open, shared infrastructure, leading to controversy that BIT diluted NAT’s uniqueness.
From a historical perspective, however, this is not malicious competition but rather the evolutionary upgrade of Bitcoin’s security budget system—from a single-project narrative into foundational infrastructure supporting the entire ecosystem.

9. Bitcoin Enters the “Security Economy Era”
Over the past decade, Bitcoin’s economic structure remained relatively simple, revolving around BTC price, ASIC mining hardware, and block subsidies.
Today, ecosystems such as Ordinals, Bitmap, DMT/NAT, BIT, Rollups, BTCFi, Data Availability (DA), and Maximum Extractable Value (MEV) are collectively driving Bitcoin’s transformation from a single-asset chain into a complete native economic system.
Bitcoin has officially entered the “Security Economy Era.”

10. From Ordinals to BIT: Advancing Together to Build a Secure Future
From Ordinals to BIT, every project has served as a stepping stone in the exploration of Bitcoin’s security budget. No single party owns the exclusive rights to Bitcoin security.
Ordinals proved that Bitcoin block space possesses repricing value.
Bitmap defined the underlying logic of Bitcoin native spatial assets.
DMT/NAT anchored the value narrative of Bitcoin security assets and the concept of second miner subsidies.
BIT is building Bitcoin security protocols and an open security market.
These are not replacement relationships, but continuous evolutionary layers of Bitcoin’s native economy—from the spatial layer, to the security layer, to the protocol layer, and finally to the market layer.
At the core of all exploration remains the same timeless question:
Who will ultimately pay for Bitcoin’s long-term network security?