Bitcoin Ecosystem in Numbers: Sidechain TVL Reaches $2 Billion, Stacks Active Accounts Hit a New High

Original author: OurNetwork

Original translation: TechFlow

Building on top of Bitcoin

BOB, Bitcoin ETF, Stacks, Rootstock, Bitcoin Virtual Machine

dplin | Dashboard

In 2024, the total locked value (TVL) of Bitcoin sidechains reached a new high of $2 billion

• In 2023, the surge in Bitcoin inscriptions has aroused the enthusiasm of crypto users. Inscriptions have opened up more possibilities for Bitcoin, which was originally used mainly as digital gold. Currently, the total number of Ordinals inscriptions has exceeded 68 million.

Footprint Analytics

• Bitcoin reached a new high of $73,000 in 2024, and the halving event has re-attracted market attention to the world’s most valuable cryptocurrency. This year has also been the year of explosive growth in Bitcoin’s second-layer solutions - the total locked value of Bitcoin’s second layer briefly exceeded $2 billion in 2024 before falling back slightly.

Footprint Analytics

• As of July 31, Merlin dominates the BTC second-layer ecosystem, holding 44% of the $1.76 billion in total locked value. Bitlayer follows closely behind with 19.6%, and Rootstock with 10.31%. The total locked value of these three chains accounts for three-quarters of the total TVL.

Footprint Analytics

BOB (Build on Bitcoin)

Jackie | Website | Dashboard

BOB has over 130,000 unique addresses, 740,000 BTC bridged from the gateway!

• BOB is a hybrid second layer backed by Bitcoin and Ethereum that went live on May 1, 2024. Since its launch, BOB has gained a large number of users, with over 133,000 unique addresses. The weekly active addresses chart shows that the user peak exceeded 30,000 in early June. Although the numbers have dropped slightly, the 30-day moving average of active addresses remains around 16,000, indicating good user retention.

Dune Analytics - @bob_collective @sander 2

• Developer engagement on BOB is rising, approaching 300 active contract addresses per week. This continued growth demonstrates the platform’s appeal to developers building and deploying smart contracts.

Dune Analytics - @bob_collective @sander 2

• BOB Gateway enables users to easily exchange Bitcoin for Wrapped Bitcoin, thereby earning returns efficiently. So far, 8,712 users have used the gateway to complete the exchange of 13.521 BTC (about $734,090.24).

Dune Analytics - @bob_collective @sander 2

• Transaction-level Alpha: The Deposit contract on BOB consumed the most gas over the past 30 days, totaling 6.4 ETH ($15,549). Below is an example transaction using the Deposit contract.

Bitcoin ETF

Ali Taslimi | Dashboard

Bitcoin spot ETF issuers suffered nearly $10 billion in losses on BTC holdings

• Over the past eight months, Bitcoin spot ETF issuers have cumulatively held 4.5% of the circulating supply of Bitcoin. However, Bitcoin price volatility has had a significant impact on the dollar valuation of their holdings. Since early August 2024, during the crypto market crash, their BTC holdings have lost nearly $10 billion in value.

Flipside - @AliTslm

• Since the Bitcoin ETF was approved, Grayscale has been reducing its holdings while other issuers have been increasing their BTC holdings. In addition, at the end of July, Grayscale launched a low-cost Bitcoin spot ETF called Grayscale Mini and transferred most of its holdings to this ETF.

Flipside - @AliTslm

• Grayscale was the dominant Bitcoin spot ETF issuer for several months. However, as Grayscale began to profit by selling its BTC holdings, other issuers began to increase their holdings. This shift led to BlackRock becoming the largest BTC holder.

Flipside - @AliTslm

Stacks

Rick | Website | Dashboard

Bitcoin L2 Stacks Active Accounts Reach All-Time High

• The Bitcoin Summer has energized the Bitcoin layer 2 (L2) ecosystem. In June alone, Stacks, the leading Bitcoin L2 in developer activity, attracted over 134,000 active users. This surge in new users is attributed to several key developments: the approval of the Grayscale Stacks Trust, optimistic news about Stacks and the SEC, and the inclusion of wBTC signer BitGo into the Stacks signer network. These developments in compliance and institutional adoption have put Stacks in the spotlight.

signa l2 1.co/stacks

• Stacks is the only Bitcoin L2 with native Bitcoin (BTC) rewards. In the most recent cycle (every 2 weeks), more than 40 BTC ($2.2 million) was distributed to a group of Stackers. Stackers is an open decentralized network where users secure the network by staking STX. Everyone can stake their STX to earn BTC rewards.

signa l2 1.co/stacks

• The increase in users flocking to the Bitcoin decentralized finance ecosystem on Stacks can be attributed to the 60 million STX TVL milestone achieved by Stacking DAO, the leading Bitcoin L2 liquid staking protocol on Stacks that allows users to stake their STX, earn stSTX, and use it in DeFi protocols.

signa l2 1.co/stacks

Rootstock

Gabriela Castillo Areco Guilherme Wenceloski | Website | Dashboard

The $180 Billion Opportunity in Bitcoin’s Untapped Potential

• Michael Zhao’s report “Bitcoin Renaissance” explains how Bitcoin’s usage potential can be seen by using the ratio of total value locked (TVL) to market cap. Currently, 17% of Ethereum’s value is used in decentralized applications (dApps), but Bitcoin only uses 0.06%. If Bitcoin can reach Ethereum’s share, $180 billion in value will be unlocked. This is a conservative estimate because developers usually test on low-cost blockchains first. The new BTC L2 technology aims to expand Bitcoin’s use to purposes beyond value storage. Rootstock is a key player in this field, as the earliest Bitcoin sidechain, developing this market by leveraging its infrastructure secured by Bitcoin’s hash power and EVM compatibility.

Footprint Analytics

• To capture the $180 billion opportunity, Bitcoin technology needs to expand its utility, driving the development of BTC L2 (second layer solutions). The Spartan report states that Rootstock is one of the four major BTC L2 networks. In the first six months of 2024, Rootstock showed strong growth, benefiting from the Bitcoin halving and partnerships with Uniswap, The Graph, Open Ocean, and Wormhole to improve its cross-chain interoperability. Other BTC L2s in the market are going through the maturation process that Rootstock has already completed. Rootstocks transaction slope remains positive, proving its advanced development.

Footprint Analytics

• 1,300 Bitcoin in Sovryn’s FastBTC in 2024 — Existing protocols within the Rootstock ecosystem are key to demonstrating market fit. Sovryn has demonstrated this potential with its FastBTC bridge, processing more transactions than all other non-native bridges to BTC L2 combined, highlighting the huge demand and potential for these solutions.

Footprint Analytics

• Transaction-level Alpha: This is the first transaction to be dispute-verified using Bitvmx on the Bitcoin mainnet. The Bitcoin L2 space is expanding, and this technology is paving the way for building secure, efficient, and high-performance Bitcoin bridges. The existence of this transaction demonstrates that it is possible to verify SNARK proofs on Bitcoin without a Bitcoin hard fork or OP_CAT.

Bitcoin Virtual Machine

8800 | Website | Dashboard

BVM - Pioneering Rollup-as-a-Service on Bitcoin Exceeds $8.2 Million in TVL

• BVM is the leading Rollup-as-a-Service (RaaS) platform on Bitcoin, allowing anyone to easily deploy and run a Bitcoin L2/L3 for just $99 per month, with no coding required. You can use BVM to customize your rollup on Bitcoin, offering a variety of modules, including data availability solutions such as Avail DA, Celestia DA, and more. You can also choose between ZK Rollup and OP Rollup, as well as different hardware attributes to build your own Bitcoin L2/L3. Rollups powered by BVM can achieve high speed (<1 second block time) and low gas fees ($0.001 per transaction), opening up possibilities for consumer applications on Bitcoin. The total locked value (TVL) of blockchains deployed on BVM reached a new milestone of $8.2 million, with NakaChain, EAIChain, and RuneChain being the main contributors to this growth.

bvm.network

• BVM recently launched Bitcoin RaaS Studio, a no-code tool that enables anyone to create a Bitcoin rollup in less than 2 minutes. BVMs visual programming editor is completely self-service, allowing you to easily design your rollup blockchain by dragging and dropping modules, similar to the Scratch user experience. Currently, more than 10 projects are running their own rollups using the BVM technology stack, and more than 243,000 wallets have been created on the mainnet.

bvm.network

• By optimizing costs through integration with data availability solutions such as Filecoin, Polygon, Avail, and Celestia, BVM is helping developers build more efficient and sustainable projects in DeFi, AI, and more. With the support of BVM, Eternal AI and Bittendo optimize costs by leveraging Celestia for data availability. This makes it one of the most efficient rollups, costing only 0.02 TIA per MB.

cellenium.io

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