With the arrival of the halving of Bitcoin mining rewards, this round of bull market was started by the BTC ETF narrative, and also ushered in a major retracement due to the imminent implementation of the BTC halving. However, the BTC ecological pattern is now very different from half a year ago, and VC institutions are actively Entering the game, in addition to the meme inscriptions driven by the community to drive fair launch, there are also public chain projects such as BTC L2 or re-pledge chain led by many venture capital institutions or exchanges.
This week's CryptoSnap Dr.DODO will introduce you to five currently popular BTC-related public chains and the capital support behind them.
BounceBit
BounceBit is a platform that uses BTC value as its security basis and claims to expand the usage scenarios of Bitcoin through its Restaking mechanism. It recently announced that its token $BB will be listed on Binance Web3 wallet token issuance platform Megadrop. BounceBit has acquired BinanceLab The popularity increased sharply after the public investment, and now it is announced that the token will cooperate with the Binance Web3 wallet $BB, becoming one of the few new BTC projects launched by Binance recently, causing an influx of more users and funds.
BounceBit is different from other BTC L2s. BounceBit relies on the security of Bitcoin chain technology. Instead, BounceBit focuses on building an independent POS public chain based on the value of BTC. Through cooperation with CeFi asset management institutions, it uses fee arbitrage and other forms to allow users to manage BTC gets an extra layer of income, and the $BBTC certificates obtained by users' pledge can be entered into the nodes used to execute BounceBit Chain or obtain $BB token rewards in the form of LST protocol. In addition, the Restaking mechanism introduced allows BounceBit to Other applications in the ecosystem can also rely on $BBTC in the node to complete other verification work such as oracles, cross-chain bridges and other applications.
Currently, BounceBit is still running a points program where users deposit wBTC, BTCB and other assets to earn points, and said it will continue until the start of the Metadrop.
Merlin Chain
Merlin Chain has the highest TVL among the five projects introduced today, currently exceeding US$950M, and is the first BTC EVM L2 to launch the mainnet. Its token $MERL has also been listed on OKX in recent days following the Bitcoin halving event. As well as top exchanges such as Bybit.
Merlin Chain is invested by institutions such as The Sparta Group and OKX Ventures. It is a Layer 2 solution built on Bitcoin. It adopts two parallel architectures, OP-Rollup and ZK-Rollup. It is called optimistic ZK-Rollup and introduced The off-chain decentralized oracle network (Oracle) serves as the DAC (Data Availability Committee) committee to solve data availability issues.
Specifically, Merlin's sequencer transmits transaction data to Oracle nodes and Prover nodes (using lumoz's Prover as a Service service). Oracle nodes are responsible for verifying ZK Proof and publishing the verification results to the Bitcoin chain (ZK-Rollup) , and because ZK Proof cannot be completely verified on the Bitcoin chain, a fraud proof mechanism is introduced to allow others to raise fraud proof challenges (OP-Rollup) to the verification process to ensure the security of the network.
Merlin's ecological project is also the best developed among the current BTC L2. Among them, the asset management protocol Solv Funds, the lending protocol Avalon Finance and the DEX protocol MerlinSwap TVL have all exceeded the 100M threshold. But will there be any after the successful currency issuance of $MERL A large number of airdrop hunters need to continue to pay attention to moving funds elsewhere.
B² Network
B² Network is also a BTC EVM Layer2 project, invested by institutions such as Hashkey Captial, OKX Ventures and Kucoin Lab. In terms of technical architecture, B² Network has some similarities with Merlin Chain. Both use optimistic ZK in parallel with ZK-Rollup and OP-Rollup. -Rollup, and cooperated with Polygon Lab to use the zkEVM solution to expand Polygon CDK to BTC, and through account abstraction, users can use either EVM wallet accounts or BTC wallet accounts to interact, while taking into account the ecological habits of both parties. At the same time, because BTC cannot store large data, B² Network has established a layer of DA Layer B² Node and plans to upgrade B² Node to B² Hub in the future to provide other developers with data availability and status based on the Bitcoin network. Verification/Proof system enabling you to build your own Bitcoin Rollup using Polygon CDK and B² Hub.
The biggest difference between B² Network and other BTC Layer2 is that its vision is not limited to one BTC Layer2, but has the same ambition as Cosmos Hub or Op Stack, becoming a BTC second-layer center through B² Hub.
At present, B² Network has also launched the mainnet at the same time as BTC is halved. The first phase of the lock-up airdrop activity has ended and the second phase of random airdrops is ongoing. Users only need to bridge BTC to the B² Network mainnet to have the opportunity to The protocol tokens will be airdropped when they are released. There is no clear time limit for this event, and the official only stated that it will end at any time.
BOB
BOB (Build On Bitcoin) is also a BTC EVM Layer2 project invested by institutions such as Castle Island and Coinbase Ventures, and has raised US$10 million in its seed round.
In BOB's roadmap, BOB divides its technology into three stages. In the first stage, BOD L2 will use OP Stack to launch the mainnet in the form of Ethereum OP Rollup. Settlement will occur in Ethereum and through Bitcoin. Bilight nodes track the status of Bitcoin, verify block headers and accept transaction inclusion proofs to achieve trustless cross-chain operations.
The second phase will introduce Bitcoin PoW security and use the new merged mining protocol OptiMine to separate block production from PoW. After the BOB sequencer processes transactions and blocks, Bitcoin miners will verify the BOB Rollup status. Only the status transition is correct. Only miners will make the commitment as part of PoW, minimizing trust in the sequencer. Finally, the sequencer submits the data covering the PoW commitment to Ethereum, and uses Ethereum as the DA Layer to verify the availability of the data.
Bitcoin will be introduced as a settlement layer in the third stage. BOB's goal is to introduce Bitcoin as a settlement layer (currently under research). A possible solution is to introduce ZK compression as part of the fraud proof process with ZK infrastructure providers. Cooperate and design BOB light client, build two-way bridge and extension suite BitVM program, and finally implement BOB Rollup status verification.
These three stages show BOB's development path from the initial optimistic Ethereum Rollup, to the introduction of Bitcoin PoW security, and finally to Bitcoin as the settlement layer. Through this progressive hybrid design, BOB aims to inherit the security of Bitcoin and the programmability of Ethereum, providing an innovative Layer-2 solution for the Bitcoin DeFi ecosystem.
BOB is currently conducting the first quarter points activity. Depositing tBTC, WBTC, stablecoins, ETH LST and other tokens can earn points rewards. However, with the halving event coming to fruition, the official announced that the mainnet will be launched on 4/24. The activities of the first season will be stopped and the points activities of the second season will be started. The details have not been disclosed yet.
Mezo
Mezo, which recently announced a $21M financing led by Pantera Capital, with participation from top venture capital firms such as Multicoin and Hack VC, is a new Bitcoin public chain developed by the Thesis team that created the BTC packaging asset tBTC. They describe themselves as Bitcoin's At the grassroots level, we will be committed to building an application ecosystem based on the economic needs of users, focusing on the BTC application scenario expansion suite, and calling its consensus mechanism Proof of HODL, through which users will lock BTC and MEZO tokens and Execute CometBFT consensus validation transactions to protect the network.
Mezo is also conducting a HODL points campaign, allowing users to earn points by depositing native BTC, WBTC or tBTC. There are not many technical details disclosed by Mezo at present. All deposits in Mezo are stored in a locked contract, which is controlled by the team’s multi-signature to hold funds until it is bridged when the Mezo mainnet is launched.
Author's opinion
Public chain storytelling will always be the track with the largest valuation, highest financing, and the most financing in the blockchain ecosystem. Therefore, many institutions are eager to miss this bull market of rising Bitcoin narratives, and have launched various concepts linked to Bitcoin. Public chain projects, from a practical point of view, does Bitcoin really need these L2s, or to put it another way, do users in the crypto care whether the bottom layer of the chain they use is BTC or EVM?
From the author's point of view, these BTC-related public chain tracks are more important than how to implement the technical logic behind them, and more importantly, the investment of resources behind them. They are markets where institutions compete for capital. For retail investors, there is one more For new chains, the targets of speculation are nothing more than MEME, DEX or lending and mining.
Therefore, as far as the author is concerned, more ways to participate may be to judge the gold content of the capital behind each project and participate in activities such as airdrops and lock-up points early to obtain free tokens. In addition, at most, pay attention to the following after the mainnet. There is no top-level Memecoin or you should pay attention to whether there is an officially endorsed Meme.
