As the Bitcoin ecosystem gains momentum, what L2 projects are worth paying attention to?

The biggest focus in 2024 is the Bitcoin ecosystem. Whether it is the approval of spot ETFs or the upcoming halving, the price of Bitcoin has reached new highs many times. At present, there are less than 10 days before the halving, and the block reward is about to be reduced from 6.25 BTC to 3.125 BTC. Under the impact of demand, Bitcoin, which has experienced several rounds of callbacks, has once again reached the $70,000 mark.

Against this background, the Bitcoin L2 track has once again become the focus of the market. Many Bitcoin L2 projects have recently announced the completion of financing, such as the first Bitcoin L2 Zulu Network that supports EVM and UTXO, the Bitcoin L2 solution UTXO Stack jointly led by ABCDE Capital and SNZ Capital, and the hybrid L2 BOB (Build on Bitcoin).

However, at present, most of the Bitcoin L2 solutions on the market still use the mapping cross-chain technology based on the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), and the market's innovation focus is gradually shifting to the ability to develop smart contracts on Bitcoin itself.

BVMnetwork stands out among many Layer 2 projects with its innovative solutions and strong technical support. The price of its native token BVM (Bitcoin Virtual Machine) has broken new highs in just one week. According to CoinGecko data, as of the time of writing, BVM has risen above $5 to set a new record high, with a 7-day increase of 64.1%.

Related reading: " BVM hits a new high, can "Bitcoin L2+AI" become a new favorite for hype? "

BVMnetwork is a modular Bitcoin L2 protocol on Bitcoin, designed to create plug-and-play blockchain modules to launch your own Bitcoin L2 blockchain. BVM’s official Twitter account tweeted on April 6 that BVM is now available for trading on OKX Dex, and that it is collaborating with nakachain to provide staking services that can be accessed through the OKX wallet.

Not only has the price increased, BVM has also frequently ranked at the top of multiple trading platforms and token popularity lists. The success of BVM has led the community to actively seek new Alphas, and BlocBeats has also set its sights on projects with coin issuance expectations, and has compiled 10 Bitcoin L2 projects for readers.

Merlin Chain

As a popular project of BTC L2, Merlin Chain's TVL has been increasing, reaching $330 million at the time of writing.

Merlin Chain integrates ZK-Rollup network, decentralized oracle network, data availability and on-chain BTC fraud proof module, aiming to extend the native innovation of Bitcoin Layer 1 to Layer 2, including supporting various Bitcoin Layer 1 assets, building dApps with Bitcoin's "completely on-chain" spirit, and community-driven asset release methods.

Merlin Chain launched the Merlin's Seal staking event on February 28. Users participating in this event can accumulate M points by staking various assets to obtain Merlin Chain's governance token MERL, accounting for 20% of the total supply. On March 19, Merlin Chain announced the official launch of M-Token, which is a mapping asset generated by users staking tokens in Merlin Chain. It is used to experience products and interactive protocols in the Merlin Chain ecosystem, improve asset utilization and witness the development of the ecosystem.

The pledged assets of users participating in Merlin's Seal are expected to be unlocked in April, and users can exchange the original assets at a 1:1 ratio by destroying the corresponding mapping asset M-Token. According to official staff, the MERL token is planned to be released once before the halving in April.

Twitter: @MerlinLayer2

Official Website: https://merlinchain.io/

White Paper: https://docs.merlinchain.io/merlin-docs

Nubit

Nubit is the first scalable Bitcoin native data availability layer that can expand Bitcoin's data capacity and support applications such as Ordinals, Layer 2, price oracles and indexers, thereby expanding the scope and efficiency of the Bitcoin ecosystem. It inherits the essence of Bitcoin's complete anti-censorship by leveraging innovative consensus algorithms and lightning networks.

Nubit is a product launched by Riema Labs based on the principle of trust minimization, designed to solve the bottleneck that may be caused by the inherent data throughput limitations of Bitcoin itself. Nubit involves four basic components: validators, Trustless Bridge, full storage nodes, and light clients.

twitter: @nubit_org

Official website: https://www.nubit.org/

White paper: https://docs.nubit.org/

Babylon

Babylon is centered around Bitcoin and develops three aspects: Bitcoin as an asset, Bitcoin as a PoW-protected timestamp server, and Bitcoin as a censorship-resistant blockspace.

To achieve this vision, Babylon proposed two protocols. One is Bitcoin Timestamp, whose main use case is to add timestamps to PoS blockchains to enhance their integrity and security, such as resisting remote attacks. The security level of these timestamps in terms of immutability increases over time. The other protocol is Bitcoin Staking, which allows Bitcoin assets to provide economic security for any decentralized system through trustless and self-custodial staking. It is a modular plug-in compatible with various PoS consensus protocols.

twitter: @babylon_chain

Official website: https://babylonchain.io/

White paper: https://docs.babylonchain.io/assets/files/btc_staking_litepaper-32bfea0c243773f0bfac63e148387aef.pdf

B² Network

B² Network It mainly uses zero-knowledge proof verification commitments to submit to the Bitcoin network, allowing challengers to initiate fraud proofs to challenge, so as to achieve the purpose of using the strong consensus of the Bitcoin network to ensure the security of B² Network. Officials are led by HashKey Capital, OKX Venture, and Waterdrop Capital, and have made it clear that 10% of token rewards will be used to incentivize early users, of which 5% will be mining rewards, and the other 5% will be distributed in the form of airdrops.

In early February this year, B² Network launched the user incentive event B² Buzz. Users can recharge assets from early February to three days before the mainnet launch to obtain parts for assembling mining machines, which can mine B² native tokens. During the event, all funds are securely managed through a multi-signature method. According to reports, bridge assets can be transferred to the deposited first-layer network in April 2024.

Twitter: @BSquaredNetwork

Official website: https://www.bsquared.network/

Whitepaper: https://www.bsquared.network/B2.pdf

Mirror Staking Protocol

Mirror Staking Protocol is a distributed protocol that provides a decentralized and trusted Bitcoin staking solution for the Bitcoin second-layer network. It uses an overlapping multi-signature group (MSG) algorithm to achieve consensus governance of hundreds to thousands of nodes, balancing efficiency, security and decentralization. The protocol implements the tokenized L1 asset mBTC, which is compatible with Ethereum. Through the MSG algorithm, only 300-1000 nodes are needed to achieve consensus, and the lower hardware threshold is more conducive to the promotion and application of the chain.

The protocol groups hundreds to thousands of nodes, and 5 nodes in the group supervise each other, of which 3 nodes can perform coin deposit and withdrawal operations. Each node pledges 1mBTC as a penalty mechanism. Due to the overlap between nodes, multiple groups can manage the same batch of Bitcoin assets to ensure security. At the same time, transaction fees are graded and an appropriate number of signature nodes are used.

The project will hold 4 rounds of node elections, selecting 100, 300, 600 and 1000 nodes respectively. Nodes need to pledge a certain amount of mBTC for 12 months of operation. Users can get airdrop rewards by participating in staking and inviting friends, etc. In the future, we will also cooperate with more L2 projects in depth.

Twitter: @Mirror_L2

Official Website: https://mirrorl2.com/

White Paper: https://mirrorl2.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/article_attachments/9459129984783

Anduro

Anduro was incubated by Marathon Digital, the largest mining company in North America. The project aims to build a multi-chain network on top of Bitcoin's second layer to maintain long-term incentives for miners, attract innovators, and increase transaction volume.

Anduro hopes to create a suitable Bitcoin application layer, by optimizing Bitcoin's underlying technology, to ensure the economic incentive mechanism for Bitcoin mining in the long term, while providing a more robust and efficient environment for blockchain application innovation. Anduro uses subchain technology, each of which is linked to Bitcoin through merged mining. All Anduro tokens can be exchanged for Bitcoin 1:1, which makes the entire network theoretically based on Bitcoin. Anduro manages the connection between subchains through the "Alliance" council body, but this body will be gradually eliminated after the credible decentralized solution is feasible.

White Paper: https://assets.website-files.com/65d7ad8d6664c459f717e27d/65df8f7ebb389f536270cf0e_Anduro-Litepaper.pdf

UniPort.Network

Uniport.Network is a Bitcoin re-pledge chain built on Polygon CDK and UPSD stablecoin system, compatible with BTC L2 of EVM, through integration ceffu, babylon allow BTC holders to earn multiple re-staking benefits. And its governance token UP is completely airdropped to the community. Its UniPort Chain is an L1 chain built on Cosmos SDK to ensure interoperability. UniPort zk-Rollup Chain is built on Polygon CDK, which helps BTC re-staking function.

The UPORT Bridge in the project architecture claims to be able to realize the full-chain circulation of Bitcoin ecosystem assets, and plays a vital role in the integration of Bitcoin ecosystem assets and UniPort.network dual-chain system, making UniPort.network a key hub connecting Bitcoin, EVM ecosystem and the broader Bitcoin ecosystem.

twitter: @Uniport_Network

Official website: https://uniport.network/

White paper: https://uniport.gitbook.io/uniport-doc

Taproot Chain

Taproot Chain is the first Bitcoin Layer2 network incubated by Taproot Labs that supports Taproot asset issuance and trading. It is built based on Op Stack technology and builds a Layer2 ecological platform for the combination of BTC native assets and smart contract Dapp applications.

TaprootChain, as a Layer 2 network built on the OP STACK framework, uses OP-Rollup technology to achieve network expansion and maintain seamless compatibility with EVM. Its key component, Taproot Bridge, uses technologies such as Schnorr signatures, Tapscript programming language, and Bitcoin time locks to provide a secure and efficient cross-chain transaction solution from Bitcoin Layer 1 to Layer 2.

In terms of development progress, TaprootChain is one of the few Bitcoin Layer2s that has completed the mainnet launch and started large-scale deployment of applications. Judging from the roadmap published on the official social media, TaprootChain's Launchpad platform and GameFi matrix are likely to be released in the next two weeks. Among them, as an ecological accelerator, Taproot Launchpad has received applications from 40 projects before it was officially launched.

Negentropy Capital has recently successfully completed a new round of investment in Taproot Chain. This round of financing was led by Negentropy Capital, and Digital Pacific Holding, Bitvalue Capital, Hussein Family Office, Wall Street investment banker Patrick Bominton and others participated in this round of investment.

twitter: @TaprootChain

Official website: https://taprootchain.io/home

Whitepaper: https://docs.taprootchain.io/

Bison Labs

Bison Labs is a sovereign Rollup solution using ZK proofs on Bitcoin, with the smallest trust assumptions and highest security on the market. Unlike existing Layer 2 solutions, Bison Labs prioritizes a Trustless system without external trust assumptions through client-side verification and protecting assets in co-hosted DLCs. This approach ensures security and prevents keys from being leaked.

To date, Bison Labs has more than 15 teams building ecological applications on its platform, and is expanding its support to EVM and Rust0 VM, as well as CairoVM.

Bison Labs CEO Jay emphasized the importance of a native smart contract ecosystem focused on Bitcoin. Unlike many other second-layer solutions that design a general "multi-signature" approach, Bison introduces a trustless and node-free way to protect network security. Bison Labs sets a new security standard through client-side verification to directly share the security of Bitcoin's first layer.

twitter: @Bison_Labs

discord: https://t.co/CiwrIkQYFy

Botanix Labs

The Botanix project is a decentralized service platform. It uses the "Spider Chain" technology to lock Bitcoin assets in a decentralized multi-signature network, thereby retaining the decentralization of Bitcoin while providing users with service capabilities that are fully compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM).

Botanix uses an account model similar to Ethereum to provide users with a native token that is pegged to Bitcoin at a 1:1 pricing. Its consensus mechanism uses the Proof of Stake (PoS) model, which requires nodes to pledge a certain amount of Bitcoin to participate in network operations. This design retains the fair distribution characteristics of Bitcoin to the greatest extent.

Through the "Spider Chain" technology, Botanix has built a dynamically changing multi-signature wallet network. The network will lock all Bitcoin assets running the Botanix platform. This can effectively isolate the attributes of Bitcoin assets and provide a solid legal basis for the subsequent development of EVM. Botanix aims to bring new application scenarios such as semantic contracts and decentralized finance to the Bitcoin ecosystem. Developers can use the Solidity programming language on Botanix and reuse Ethereum's mature development system.

Twitter: @BotanixLabs

Official website: https://www.botanixlabs.xyz/en/home

White paper: https://a-us.storyblok.com/f/1014909/x/8bdb3e5611/botanix-protocol-whitepaper.pdf

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