- Bitlayer has a 31% share of total value locked (TVL), compared to Merlin’s 16% share.
Layer 2 of Bitcoin As far as total value locked (TVL) goes, Bitlayer has taken the top spot in the Bitcoin scaling networks ranking.
With $391 million, Bitlayer—a Layer 2 solution that leverages the BitVM paradigm to provide Turing-completeness equivalent to Ethereum—has surpassed Merlin to take the lead with 31% of the TVL in the sector.
In the last two months, Bitlayer network assets have more than doubled, while Merlin’s assets have decreased by 50% to $196 million, or 16% of the Bitcoin Layer 2 market.
With over $170 million in TVL, Rootstock and CORE, the third and fourth largest scaling networks, have 14% and 13% of the total.
Charlie Hu, one of Bitlayer’s co-founders, claims that the network’s growth is mostly being driven by the introduction of several dapps, such as the restaking protocol Bedrock and the liquid staking protocol pStake.
The initiative gained further interest after Bitlayer’s $11 million Series A round led by Franklin Templeton was revealed last week.
Tokens, NFTs, and badges are also given out as part of the Layer 2’s ongoing incentives program, the Racer Center.
According to Bob Bodily, CEO of Bioniq, an Ordinals marketplace, Bitlayer has executed extremely well. He said that Charlie is a machine and mentioned the project’s growing alliances, saying that many builders and procedures were joining their chain and working on it.
Additionally, Bodily praised Bitlayer for their amazing ecosystem efforts.
Bitcoin DeFi Slump
However, while Bitlayer’s TVL increases, the Bitcoin Decentralized Finance ecosystem as a whole is collapsing. The value of Bitcoin TVL has dropped to $680 million after rising sharply in April and reaching an all-time high of $1.1 billion in June. The 40% decline occurs in spite of the hype around Bitcoin Season 2.
According to Bodily, a large number of Bitcoin owners who are using their assets are moving to Ethereum.
Suggesting that Ethereum is the most successful Bitcoin side chain ever, he pointed to WBTC’s TVL, which currently stands at an incredible $9.9 billion.
But since the early 2023 launch of Ordinals, a protocol that allows non-financial data to be indexed on Bitcoin similarly to NFTs on Ethereum, developers have been gravitating toward the cryptocurrency.
And interest should continue to rise because of emerging paradigms like BitVM, improvements like Taproot, and the possibility of scripts like OP_CAT being resurrected.
Disclaimer : This article was created for informational purposes only and should not be taken as investment advice. An asset’s past performance does not predict its future returns. Before making an investment, please conduct your own research, as digital assets like cryptocurrencies are highly risky and volatile financial instruments.
