Original article by Willem Schroé
Original title: Building on Bitcoin in the Age of Web3
Original source: Coindesk
Compiled by: Koala, Mars Finance
“We need a cultural, philosophical, and technological movement to return Bitcoin to its once prominent place in decentralized finance,” said Willem Schroé, CEO of Botanix Labs.
On May 23, 2014, days after Credit Suisse pleaded guilty in a $2.6 billion settlement, Edmund Moy, who served as director of the United States Mint from 2006 to 2011, had an epiphany. Hours after the charges were announced, and after seeing a public statement from the bank’s chief executive, Brady W. Dougan, that the fine “wouldn’t hurt much,” Moy wrote on X, “It’s time to let the banks compete.”
The experience inspired him to write The Monetary Revolution with Bitcoin and articulate a philosophy that places Bitcoin at the center of a movement he believes ultimately aims to disrupt money, payments, and all of finance. Through his own experiences in financial institutions, Moy came to believe that Bitcoin could disrupt “conventional ideas” about money, banking, and financial technology as a whole by introducing a permissionless, decentralized financial system.
In its early days, Bitcoin was full of innovation, and the dominant spirit of disrupting traditional finance seemed to accelerate as a result. During this period, Tether launched on Bitcoin, original decentralized exchanges like Bisq launched for Bitcoin traders, and tokens (fungible and non-fungible) also sprung up on Bitcoin. The mood across the industry was a mixture of excitement, anxiety, and greed. Solana, Ethereum, and other blockchains have been riding on Bitcoin's near-total stagnation for years.
While nearly every Bitcoin enthusiast agrees with the vision Moy articulated, opinions vary widely on how to achieve these decentralized monetary and financial ideas. From stablecoins to NFTs, nearly every class of application commonly used in the decentralized finance industry today has its roots in Bitcoin, but a strong ideological undercurrent is beginning to spark a cultural shift that is starting to discourage and crack down on these projects. From Satoshi Dice in 2012 to Ordinals in 2024, Bitcoin’s history is littered with experimental projects that have been slammed for spamming, polluting, or distracting the Bitcoin community. As a result, developers, users, and capital that would have otherwise flowed to the financial application industry running on Bitcoin have been gradually pushed to other public blockchains.
Imagine creating a new financial system with a strong currency but nowhere to use it. If this anti-innovation movement succeeds, this will be the inevitable outcome for Bitcoin. Thankfully, they haven’t, as the industry has witnessed over the past two years, with inscriptions, runes, new second-layer networks, and other types of innovative projects built on top of Bitcoin. Billions of dollars from professional investors and retail speculators have been poured into it, ushering in what many market participants believe is a new era for Bitcoin, but in reality, it marks a return of Bitcoin culture to its original mission of disrupting and decentralizing the world of finance.
In an industry with thousands of competitors, Bitcoin is the best public blockchain. Not only does Bitcoin have the largest and most recognizable brand in and outside of the cryptocurrency industry, it also controls the largest pool of capital in the cryptocurrency space, which currently stands at over $1 trillion. Bitcoin is also the most rigorously tested public blockchain in the world, with thousands of nodes, spread across the globe, and a network uptime of 100% for 11 consecutive years. Bitcoin is the largest, most secure, most decentralized, and most reliable permissionless financial network in the world. Building on Bitcoin means building on the best.
But Bitcoin still has a lot of catching up to do. Solana, Ethereum, and other blockchains have spent years taking advantage of Bitcoin’s near-total stagnation to spawn ecosystems with hundreds of applications, thousands of users, and billions of dollars. Even the Lightning Network, long the darling of Bitcoin’s “anti-DeFi” faction, has seen the number of tokens held on its network stagnate for years.
It’s time to recommit to making Bitcoin the home for innovation and experimentation in the cryptocurrency industry again. If Bitcoin doesn’t serve as a gateway for new users into permissionless finance, we’ve failed. If Bitcoin is nothing more than an asset held in custody by ETF providers, we’ve failed. If we don’t adopt the world’s best form of money while developing a native financial system powered by Bitcoin, we’ve failed. The techno-cultural norms and habits that have held Bitcoin back for years must be eradicated.
It takes an army of builders to build the future of money and finance on Bitcoin. Over the past two years, hundreds of new founders and engineers have started building on Bitcoin, but that number needs to continue to grow. At Botanix Labs, we are developing part of Bitcoin’s future using a Layer 2 network called Spiderchain. But everyone building anything with Bitcoin should be proud to be one of the many collaborating to build a decentralized financial ecosystem. Thanks to the combined efforts of this group of builders, Bitcoin’s best days are still ahead.
Bitcoin is a civilization-changing invention that should free ordinary people from the clutches of a financial system that is so centralized and censored. But Bitcoin needs to foster an alternative financial system to replace its incumbents. In this new financial era of transparency, decentralization, and permissionlessness, experimentation and innovation should be core principles. The financial future that Moy and thousands of others envision with Bitcoin depends on all of us. Given all that is at stake, we must at least give it a try.
