In Good Hands: Bitcoin Building a Better Future
Bitcoin is, by all accounts, still a nascent protocol. This period of adolescence can be said to be more formative than any other period in our short history. Because the stakes are already quite high for groundbreaking projects that have been tested and grown for less than 20 years. As we’ve watched new investors, developers, users, and marketers flock to Bitcoin over the past 18 months, the fundamental reasons why the so-called Bitcoin Renaissance is so important seem to have taken a backseat.
During this time, I received numerous questions like “What do you think about this new L2?” or “Will this new L2 actually work?” In almost every case, my answer was “I don’t know.” Building on Bitcoin is difficult and many people don’t know how. So it’s difficult to know exactly what someone is making. Unless you know what you’re doing, let alone whether it will work. However, this reality has not deterred founders and investors from trying to profit.
In short, this new era of Bitcoin activity is largely defined by marketing rather than actual innovation.
Engineering first, marketing second
My academic and professional background is in mathematics and cryptography, not marketing. I understand that developing a strong brand is important for a successful product or protocol, but marketing alone is not enough and at worst is very risky. Innovative ideas need a strong foundation, not pretense. Satoshi’s last forum post began with words that every Bitcoin builder should keep in mind: “There is more work to be done (…)” Bitcoin projects backed by marketing will fail and end up ruining users, investors and others. It is destined to harm the entire community. .
One symptom of this dynamic is the simple lack of white paper. Although these documents seem boring and optional to most people, white papers are used as a tool to explain new ideas as clearly as possible to encourage criticism, imitation, and real-world implementation. However, well-written whitepapers seem to be an afterthought for most new projects claiming to build on Bitcoin. Instead, the industry landscape was defined by marketing materials.
Signs of these types of projects are easy to spot. Phrases like “Bitcoin-based,” “Bitcoin aligned,” or “Bitcoin hybrid” are often used. In many cases, this language is passed around to disguise the fact that these protocols are not actually built on top of Bitcoin. In other cases, this marketing is used to divert attention from the reality that not even the founders know what they are building, but they want to capitalize on the Bitcoin brand anyway.
When thinking about this unfortunate reality, what comes to mind is the cryptocurrency world’s principle of security through obscurity. Simply put, this idea means that since no one knows how a given thing works, it can actually be safe. To be clear, this is not something any serious engineering team aspires to do.
Botanix Labs is building an EVM-equivalent layer with a testnet running on Bitcoin at the time of publication. Instead of launching new tokens and chasing exchange listings, we focus on building simple and secure protocols. Instead of playing marketing games, we focus on building a self-governing application ecosystem that people want to use.
We began conceptualizing SpiderChain in late 2022.
We launched our testnet in November 2023.
We plan to launch the first version of the mainnet this summer.
We believe that building is the best way to help Bitcoin succeed.
we are watchmen
Scrutinizing new Bitcoin projects is not an activity only accessible to the most experienced software engineers and crypto experts. Anyone using Bitcoin can and should ask these simple questions:
- “Who has the keys?”
- “Is this Sybil resistant?”
- “Can an operator carry out a hostage attack?”
- “What are the basic security assumptions?”
But all these questions are already answered in plain English in the white paper. Projects without a clear design, without clearly documented security risks, and without a clearly expressed analysis of pros, cons and goals are part of the problem. Unfortunately, this seems to have quickly become the standard in Bitcoin’s two-tier environment. Botanix Labs carefully explains protocol design, attack vectors, etc. in a white paper available on its website.
Cypherpunks write code. However, this simple truth has been forgotten by the proliferation of new two-layer Bitcoin protocols (many of which do not live up to that title). Regulators and auditors cannot and should not be relied upon to correct them. We in the Bitcoin community need to focus on the long-term mission and ignore short-term shenanigans.
What someone creates is more important than how they market it. And for any serious project based on Bitcoin, marketing is never more important than security. Standardizing these principles across the Bitcoin industry is a responsibility shared by everyone at Bitcoin.
Fight against fiat currency
Bitcoin is a movement, not a grab for money. And I believe we can and must do better than the ideas and projects being offered to the market during the ongoing Bitcoin Renaissance. Don’t be silent. Please do not accept this behavior. Don’t expect the market to weed out these bad actors on its own.
We are fighting against a fiat currency regime that desperately needs to fail to build a decentralized, permissionless financial system that runs on Bitcoin for centuries. However, most new Bitcoin brand projects do not think beyond 12 months into the future.
In what sense does this improve the world or achieve our shared mission?
“I moved on to other things,” said Satoshi Nakamoto. (Bitcoin) is in good hands.” Those hands are ours, and anyone who cares about the future of their money must be vigilant about keeping them in good condition.
