EVM

Jun 16, 2026

Bitcoin DeFi’s demand problem is becoming harder to ignore

Bitcoin, DeFi Bitcoin Layer 2, Bitcoin Yield, Botanix Labs, BTCFi, DeFi, EVM, Spiderchain

BitcoinJune 16, 2026·6 min read

Botanix Labs is shutting down its Bitcoin Layer 2 network after failing to attract sufficient user demand, despite operating live infrastructure with 26 million transactions and integrations with major crypto platforms. The closure signals a structural problem for Bitcoin-native DeFi projects: even well-executed, token-free protocols cannot compete with the simplicity of holding Bitcoin directly or using wrapped versions on established chains.

Botanix processed 26.1 million transactions across 176,056 unique addresses with zero security incidents over one year of operation.
The project deliberately avoided token launches, airdrops and points programs that typically bootstrap early chain activity and user growth.
Shutdown begins July 1, 2024, with grace periods through August 1 before remaining Bitcoin assets are swept and the company dissolves.

26.1M total transactions processed on Botanix Layer 2 network before shutdown.
176,056 unique wallet addresses active on the chain versus target demand community expectations.
July 1 official wind-down date when users must withdraw assets or face delays through August.

Botanix Labs announced the closure of its Bitcoin Layer 2 network on June 16, concluding that user demand could not sustain operations despite the protocol delivering functional infrastructure and institutional partnerships.

The shutdown represents a critical test case for Bitcoin-native DeFi: a team that shipped working code, avoided the token-farming mechanisms that typically inflate early metrics, and secured integrations with Chainlink, Morpho, GMX, Dolomite, Fireblocks, Alchemy, Galaxy and OKX Wallet still found the market unwilling to migrate Bitcoin activity into new programmable layers.

Botanix’s Spiderchain maintained 100% uptime and zero security incidents across more than a year of operation, processing 25 million transactions and reaching roughly 200,000 wallets. Current network data shows 26.1 million total transactions, 176,056 unique addresses and 8,387 deployed contracts.

The company will begin shutting down operations on July 1, with a two-week grace period through July 15 and a potential final extension to August 1 before remaining user funds are swept and the company begins dissolution.

Botanix’s infrastructure worked, but Bitcoin holders chose not to use it

The Botanix shutdown matters precisely because the protocol succeeded where many Layer 2 projects fail: it achieved production-grade stability and attracted meaningful institutional partnerships without resorting to token incentives or artificial activity metrics. The team deliberately rejected the standard playbook for bootstrapping chain adoption. No token launch.

No airdrop. No points program. No yield farming to manufacture transaction volume.

The protocol instead offered a functional path for Bitcoin holders to access EVM-style applications, lending, borrowing and yield products without leaving Bitcoin or wrapping their holdings on another chain.

That deliberate restraint makes the failure instructive rather than dismissible. Botanix cannot blame a failed token launch, poor tokenomics or a liquidity crisis for insufficient demand. The network ran reliably, held user funds safely and processed genuine activity across recognized platforms.

Yet the core question remains unanswered: does Bitcoin’s culture and user base actually want programmable DeFi utility natively on Bitcoin itself?

The team’s own analysis points to a cultural and timing problem rather than a technical one. Bitcoin holders, Botanix concluded, are still primarily focused on Bitcoin as a reserve asset and working through questions about its political and monetary role.

The conservative culture embedded in Bitcoin’s base layer creates resistance to novel applications and risk-taking, even when wrapped in secure, well-audited infrastructure.

Wrapped Bitcoin and simplicity are winning out over Bitcoin-native Layer 2s

Botanix’s closure arrives at a moment when institutional demand for Bitcoin yield is accelerating elsewhere. Bitcoin income strategies are now packaged across mainstream financial products, from DeFi vaults to BlackRock’s spot bitcoin ETF structures to Japan-focused treasury strategies through platforms like Metaplanet.

The irony is acute: Bitcoin is being converted into a yield-generating asset across global finance, yet Bitcoin holders remain reluctant to participate in Bitcoin-native DeFi protocols designed to capture that yield directly.

The market instead appears to prefer two alternatives. First, investors hold Bitcoin directly on custodial platforms or hardware wallets, ceding yield but maximizing simplicity and regulatory clarity. Second, institutions wrap Bitcoin on established chains like Ethereum, accessing DeFi infrastructure without introducing new execution layer risk.

Wrapped BTC on Ethereum, Bitcoin bridges to other chains, and off-chain yield products sidestep the need for users to learn new interfaces, validate new chain security assumptions or trust new economic models.

This preference reveals a structural limitation in Bitcoin-native DeFi recruitment. A protocol must overcome not just technical adoption friction but also the deep-rooted cultural preference within Bitcoin communities for simplicity, custody control and minimal financial experimentation.

Bitcoin’s value proposition as a reserve asset actively competes with its potential as programmable infrastructure. Botanix discovered that Bitcoin holders, given the choice, weight reserve asset simplicity more heavily than application utility.

What Botanix’s failure reveals about Bitcoin DeFi demand

The Botanix shutdown is not a case of poor execution or failed technology. The protocol shipped, operated reliably and integrated with institutional partners.

The closure is instead evidence of a deeper structural problem: Bitcoin holders do not appear willing to relocate their assets into Layer 2 networks at the scale required to sustain specialized DeFi infrastructure, regardless of that infrastructure’s quality or security track record.

This creates a demand ceiling for Bitcoin-native DeFi projects. Even well-funded teams with technical credibility and institutional partnerships cannot overcome the gravitational pull of holding Bitcoin directly or using established wrapped representations on other chains. The market has effectively chosen custodial simplicity and interoperability over native programmability.

Bitcoin Layer 2 projects that depend on organic adoption face a headwind that no amount of technical excellence can fully overcome.

The broader implication matters for institutional investors evaluating Bitcoin DeFi infrastructure plays. Projects betting on sustained growth in Bitcoin-native DeFi must find use cases that cannot be replicated through wrapped assets or off-chain yield products. Botanix could not find enough of those use cases to justify ongoing operations.

Its team concluded that the Bitcoin community’s center of gravity, its priorities and risk tolerance, simply does not align with the adoption rates that standalone Layer 2 infrastructure requires.

Botanix’s token-free strategy backfired on the growth narrative

The decision to avoid token launches and points programs was designed to signal seriousness: Botanix would prove its value through product quality and user demand, not artificial incentive mechanics. That constraint, however, eliminated the primary growth lever available to most Layer 2 projects. Competing chains launched tokens, distributed them widely and used airdrops to seed user bases.

Botanix rejected that path deliberately.

In hindsight, that choice may have been strategically fatal. The protocol achieved 176,056 unique addresses, a meaningful user base, but far short of the scale required to sustain operations as a standalone company. Token incentives could have amplified that adoption, though at the cost of diluting the “organic demand” narrative the team valued.

Botanix faced a classic startup dilemma: pursue authentic demand measurement without growth hacks, or compete on equal footing with projects willing to sacrifice purity for scale.

The shutdown suggests that Bitcoin-native DeFi projects face a choice between two paths, both problematic. They can avoid tokens and airdrops, accurately measuring demand but likely failing to reach the user scale required for sustainability. Or they can deploy growth incentives like other Layer 2s, artificially inflating metrics and delaying the moment when real demand is tested.

Botanix chose the former path and discovered that authentic demand alone could not sustain the platform.

Institutional investors now face a narrowing window for Bitcoin DeFi bets

The Botanix closure creates a selection problem for institutions evaluating Bitcoin-native infrastructure investments. If a technically sound, well-resourced protocol cannot attract sufficient organic demand to survive, what does that imply for newer or smaller Bitcoin DeFi projects?

The bar for demonstrating sustainable user demand just became much higher, and many projects will fail before reaching it.

This may consolidate Bitcoin DeFi activity toward a smaller number of platforms and use cases. Projects offering unique functionality that cannot be repl

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Sep 28, 2025

Supra vs. Monad: Which Technology Makes Ethereum Transactions Faster?

Blockchain, DeFi, Editor's Choice, Ethereum Ethereum, EVM, Supra

Supra Outperforms Monad in EVM Parallel Execution Benchmark | Crypto Coin Show

BLOCKCHAIN ANALYSIS

Breakthrough conflict specification-aware technology achieves 4× speedup over sequential execution

September 27, 2025 | Blockchain Technology Analysis

Key Finding

Supra executes Ethereum Virtual Machine transactions in ~50% less time than Monad, representing the highest performing EVM execution in the world

Industry Analysis — A comprehensive head-to-head benchmark has revealed significant performance differences between two leading approaches to Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) parallel execution. Supra’s conflict specification-aware Block Transactional Memory (SupraBTM) has demonstrated substantial performance advantages over Monad’s 2-phase optimistic parallel execution (Monad 2PE) in rigorous testing using real Ethereum mainnet data.

4×

Speedup over sequential execution

1.5-1.7×

Faster than Monad 2PE

10,000

Ethereum blocks tested

50%

Less execution time vs Monad

Revolutionary Approach to Transaction Conflicts

The fundamental difference between these approaches lies in their conflict handling strategies. While Monad employs an optimistic execution model that assumes transactions are mostly independent and handles conflicts through re-execution, Supra’s SupraBTM takes a proactive approach by preventing conflicts before they occur.

SupraBTM’s Technical Advantages

Static Conflict Analysis: Pre-determines read/write sets through smart contract analysis
Dependency Graph Construction: Organizes transactions into optimized execution paths
Proactive Scheduling: Maximizes parallelism while avoiding conflicts upfront
Adaptive Execution: Dynamically adjusts to high-conflict workloads

Benchmark Methodology

Testing Environment: Both systems were evaluated using identical hardware specifications on a dedicated f4.metal.medium server featuring AMD 4564P 16-core processors, 192GB RAM, and NVMe storage. The benchmark utilized 10,000 historical Ethereum mainnet blocks with complete pre-state snapshots and transaction data.

Technical Architecture Comparison

Head-to-Head Comparison: Supra SupraBTM vs Monad 2PE

Metric	SupraBTM (iBTM)	Monad 2PE
Best Speedup (Post-Merge)	5.16× (296 transactions)	4.33× (63 transactions)
Best Speedup (Pre-Merge)	6.07× (342 transactions)	7.07× (431 transactions)
Implementation Language	Rust (REVM)	C++ (Native EVM)
Conflict Handling	Proactive Prevention	Optimistic Re-execution

Performance Extremes Reveal Key Differences

The benchmark revealed significant performance variations across different transaction volumes and complexity levels. SupraBTM demonstrated particular strength in high-throughput scenarios typical of DeFi protocols and on-chain order books, where its conflict prevention approach minimized costly re-executions.

“While both models aim to optimize parallel execution, Monad’s approach is more flexible but susceptible to re-execution overhead, whereas SupraBTM is more deterministic with lower runtime conflict costs and thus scales better.” — Technical Analysis

Industry Implications

These findings have significant implications for blockchain scalability and application performance. SupraBTM’s approach appears particularly well-suited for:

• High-frequency DeFi applications with frequent state modifications

• On-chain order books requiring predictable execution timing

• Enterprise applications demanding consistent performance

• Environments with dynamic conflict ratios

Conversely, Monad’s 2PE execution model may be optimal for workloads with smaller transactional blocks where conflict frequency remains low.

Future Development Directions

The research suggests that hybrid approaches combining optimistic execution with conflict specification-aware scheduling may emerge as the gold standard for parallel execution. Supra’s conflict specification model enables determination of pairwise conflicts in transaction blocks, opening possibilities for statistical AI techniques in adaptive parallel execution algorithms.

Access Full Technical Analysis

Download complete performance data and technical specifications

Download Pre-Merge Data Download Post-Merge Data Join SupraBTM Waitlist

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Contact: For technical inquiries and additional benchmark data, contact our research team.

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This analysis is based on publicly available technical documentation and benchmark results. Performance may vary based on specific implementation details and workload characteristics.

Jun 24, 2025

Is Mango’s Multi-VM approach enough to solve fragmented liquidity?

AI News, Blockchain, DeFi, Ethereum, Layer 2, Solana DeFi Liquidity, EVM, Layer-1 Blockchain, Mango Network, MoveVM, Multi-VM Architecture, SVM

Decentralized finance (DeFi) still struggles with fragmented liquidity, where users face higher costs, developers must duplicate their efforts across chains, and capital becomes less efficient because every blockchain operates in isolation.

A new Layer 1 blockchain, Mango Network, claims it runs several virtual machines, Ethereum’s EVM, Solana’s SVM, and Facebook’s MoveVM (Multi-VM architecture) on a shared system. This allows it to connect apps and users from different blockchain communities without risky third-party tools.

Mango even launched a major airdrop to reward early users, and its testnet claims to handle more than 297,000 transactions per second due to high-speed performance.

But can a single blockchain link multiple virtual machines, both enable assets to move freely, process extremely fast transactions, and remain secure?

Some followers say Mango will open up access to liquidity and open the world of decentralized finance to everyone in a more connected and useful way, to a wider array of people. Still, critics worry the system is too complex, too new, and potentially so unstable that it becomes increasingly difficult to untangle as it grows.

Why should anyone care about Mango Network?

Mango Network is a newly launched full-chain Layer 1 blockchain that aims to change how developers build and users interact with decentralized applications across different ecosystems.

While traditional blockchains rely on just one type of virtual machine (VM), such as Ethereum’s EVM or Solana’s SVM, Mango supports multiple virtual machines running side by side within a single network.

The company may use Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) for Solidity-based apps, MoveVM for applications written in the Move language (originally developed by Meta), and Solana Virtual Machine (SVM) for Rust-based, high-performance programs.

With this unique structure, Mango creates one platform where developers from different blockchains can build apps using their preferred tools.

At the same time, users interact with these products through one account and ecosystem without leaving the platform or going through risky, expensive, and slow bridging processes.

The company gave away 5% of its MGO token supply to early adopters, testnet participants, and contributors through a community-first airdrop that allowed users to trade, stake, or move their tokens as they please before Mango’s Token Generation Event (TGE).

Mango secured $13.5 million in Series B funding in February 2025 for security audits, ecosystem development, developer onboarding, and expanding toolkits to make it easier to build on the network.

Mango’s vision of shared infrastructure, native cross-VM communication, and unified state management could set a new standard for what a blockchain can do.

Why does DeFi struggle with fragmented liquidity?

Each blockchain (Ethereum, Solana, BNB Chain, etc) has its tokens, apps, smart contracts, and user base locked within its network that traps money and assets in silos.

This isolation slows down the entire DeFi economy because money can’t move freely or interact with other ecosystems, and creates multiple small liquidity pools instead of one large, flexible pool of capital.

Users have to use third-party bridges or deal with wrapped tokens that copy the value of the original asset, but come with their risks, just to move assets between chains, like sending tokens from Ethereum to Solana.

Bridges cause huge losses because they’re often slow, expensive, and complicated, and in many cases, they’ve been hacked or broken. In contrast, wrapped tokens can break the connection to the original asset or lose value if the wrapping system fails.

This fragmentation costs developers time and money and splits their user base across different versions of the same application. They must either stick to one chain and limit their audience or rebuild and redeploy their app across multiple chains to reach more users. It also multiplies their workload and adds unnecessary complexity to DeFi building as they must maintain these versions, manage different smart contracts, and track separate liquidity pools.

On the other hand, users must set up different wallets, learn new interfaces, and pay extra fees each time they move money around just to use apps on multiple chains. The struggle creates a broken experience where users feel like they’re jumping between disconnected worlds instead of using one global financial system.

How Mango Network tries to fix liquidity fragmentation

Mango Network connects smart contracts on different VMs through a communication protocol built on OPStack (OP-Mango) that syncs all the VMs and ensures data and events are correctly passed between them.

Developers can mix and match components from different VMs, and users can access a unified experience because cross-chain interactions are faster, smoother, and far more secure.

There’s also no need to sync data across different parts of the chain on Mango’s shared global state across all VMs because every virtual machine (EVM, MoveVM, and SVM) reads from and writes to the same underlying ledger. On top of that, users only need one account to access all dApps and services across all supported VMs.

In addition, Mango allows tokens to move freely and natively within the network through a standardized format for digital assets across all VMs, making wrapping, copying, or bridging unnecessary. Developers can now create more reliable apps, and users can transfer or use their tokens more confidently, knowing they won’t encounter compatibility problems.

Mango’s unified liquidity pools across all VMs allow assets deposited into one protocol to be used instantly by another, even if the apps are written in different languages and built for different VMs.You won’t have to copy funds, bridge tokens, or manually move assets between services because a lending protocol built on EVM can contribute liquidity to a DEX written in MoveVM, and vice versa.

Can Mango’s Network handle the load?

Mango Network says the blockchain can process up to 297,450 transactions per second (TPS) and offer sub-second finality. This means a transaction gets confirmed and finalized almost instantly once a user sends it. Mango could support thousands of decentralized apps and millions of users without suffering from congestion or delays if these numbers prove true on the mainnet.

The network processed over 120 million on-chain interactions in more than 500,000 wallet addresses from token swaps, staking, cross-chain transfers, and decentralized trading through its ecosystem partner, BeingDEX, in just a few weeks during its testnet campaign.

Mango’s parallel execution engine, MoveVM, uses the Move language’s resource-oriented design to process many operations simultaneously rather than waiting for each one to finish before starting the next. Moreover, Solana’s SVM runs on the Sealevel execution engine to provide blazing speeds and high throughput in the Solana ecosystem.

However, testnets may not behave the same way as real economic activity on a live chain because they often involve simulated or incentivized traffic. Mainnet conditions introduce new challenges like malicious behavior, network-wide stress tests, flash loan attacks, and unexpected user spikes that can expose weaknesses in performance or security..

Mango’s true test will come after its Token Generation Event (TGE) and mainnet launch, when real users, real assets, and real market demand begin to flood the chain.

The platform could set a new benchmark for performance in DeFi infrastructure if it can deliver sub-second speeds and high transaction throughput without compromising security, reliability, or developer experience. However, it may need to scale back its ambitions or make rapid improvements if it doesn’t.

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