Author: Paul Veradittakit, Partner at Pantera Capital; Translation: Golden Finance xiaozou
As the first and largest crypto asset by market cap, Bitcoin remains one of the most influential assets in the entire liquid token market. However, despite its widespread use and acceptance as a decentralized global store of value, many still criticize Bitcoin’s scalability, programmability, and ability to attract developers, especially after the craze over Ethereum and smart contract platforms.
Mezo is an EVM-compatible Bitcoin economic layer that aims to overcome the above obstacles. This article will explore the current state of Bitcoin, the innovative work being done by Mezo, and its potential future impact on the cryptocurrency ecosystem.
1. Current situation
Bitcoin’s dominance of the cryptocurrency market is undeniable. Today, there are more than 100 million Bitcoin holders worldwide, and Bitcoin’s market cap is roughly three times that of the next largest crypto asset, Ethereum. Despite this, Bitcoin can be said to be rigid in terms of innovation and simplicity. Unlike Ethereum and other scalable smart contract platforms, Bitcoin’s core design has always limited its scalability and programmability.
Industry leaders such as Thesis, the venture capital firm that incubated Mezo, are now looking for new ways to enhance Bitcoin’s capabilities through L2 solutions. These advances are essential for enabling more complex features on the Bitcoin network, such as smart contracts and decentralized applications (dApps).
2. Progress and Milestones
Mezo has made impressive progress to date on the journey of the Bitcoin revolution. The project integrates all of Thesis’ consumer-facing Bitcoin products into a highly cohesive ecosystem on the Mezo platform. Together, these projects create a more usable Bitcoin economy, all powered by Mezo.
Mezo is made possible by a number of key upgrades to the Bitcoin mainnet that facilitate Bitcoin development. The most significant developments in recent years include:
Taproot upgrade (November 2021): Enhances the data storage capacity of Bitcoin blocks.
Ordinal Inscriptions (January 2023): Enables a metadata layer to make individual sats non-fungible.
BRC-20 token (March 2023): Introduces a standardized protocol via JSON code for deployment, minting, and transfer functions.
These milestones highlight the Bitcoin network’s growing potential as a hub for decentralized financial applications (DeFi) and non-fungible tokens (NFTs).
3. Attractiveness
In recent months, Mezo has demonstrated early market dominance in the Bitcoin L2 ecosystem. Currently, the team ranks among the top Bitcoin L2 in terms of total locked value (TVL). We expect this growth to continue as the Mezo team begins to launch its public testnet and attract more and more developers to develop applications on Mezo.
4. Current and future impact
Advancements in Bitcoin’s base layer are significant. Mezo opens up new opportunities for financial innovation by extending Bitcoin’s programmability, especially in regions with high Bitcoin adoption such as Latin America, Africa, and Asia. The introduction of the Bitcoin DeFi ecosystem could quickly scale. We believe this could boost BTC DeFi market cap to around $50 billion to $400 billion, depending on adoption.
In addition, the macro trend of technological improvement and institutional adoption provides a strong impetus. Bitcoin ETF applications from large companies prove that L2 solutions have been accepted, institutional interest is increasing, and Bitcoin has a bright future beyond its current limitations.
5. Main participants and their contributions
At the heart of Mezo’s groundbreaking vision are several key individuals who bring a wealth of experience and expertise. Leading the charge is Matt Luongo, Mezo’s CEO, who previously co-founded Thesis and served as CTO at Scholrly. Carolyn Reckhow, Mezo’s COO, brings extensive experience in global operations at Consensys and Casa, responsible for ensuring the smooth execution of operational strategy. Antonio Salazar Cardozo, Mezo’s CTO, drives technological innovation by leveraging his deep technical expertise from his time as Technical Lead at Keep Network. Together, these champions are committed to building scalable, innovative Bitcoin L2 solutions, supported by a team of seasoned professionals.
Pantera led Mezo’s $21 million funding round, with participation from several other top investment firms.
6 Conclusion
In summary, Mezo represents a significant advancement for the Bitcoin ecosystem, solving long-standing scalability and programmability issues. By building an EVM-compatible Bitcoin layer, Mezo will unlock new potential for Bitcoin in DeFi and beyond. With a strong team, recent technical upgrades, and growing institutional interest, Mezo has become an important force in shaping the future of Bitcoin expansion and Bitcoin applications.
