Year Of The Spider: Enter The Botanix EVM-Compatible Bitcoin Layer 2

Forbes

01-07-2025

The Glass Spider Tour, David Bowie, Festivalground, Werchter, Belgium, 02/06/1987. (Photo by Gie ...)
For nearly a decade, Alisia Painter has seen firsthand how the world's largest cryptocurrency remained largely static – bought, sold, and held, but rarely put to work.
But after years of watching bitcoin's potential remain largely untapped, Painter and her team began building Botanix two and a half years ago with a simple question: if bitcoin has established itself as the premier cryptocurrency, why isn't anything being built on it?
The answer lies in the fact that bitcoin's original design prioritized security and decentralization over programmability. While smart contracts flourished on networks like Ethereum and Solana that promoted these capabilities, bitcoin retained primarily a store of value function despite having the largest market capitalization and adoption of any cryptocurrency.
During an interview with me for Roxom TV at Bitcoin Las Vegas, Painter explained that the vast majority of bitcoiners only engage in three basic activities: buy, sell and hodl.
Digital Gold to Programmable Money
Botanix Labs, the company Painter co-founded alongside Willem Schroé, is looking to change that mindset. On July 1 it launched the Botanix mainnet with the aim to transforming bitcoin from digital gold into programmable money that can power a full financial ecosystem.
She emphasized that up until now, the growth of decentralized and on-chain finance over the last five years has largely bypassed the bitcoin world:
The Botanix blockchain looks to empower bitcoiners by bringing smart contract functionality directly to the $2 trillion bitcoin network without compromising on core principles. The Botanix Labs team claims that the network is the first fully-decentralized bitcoin Layer 2 that is also Ethereum Virtual Machine compatible, meaning that it can support smart contracts originally created to be run on Ethereum.
Enter the Spiderchain
Security is always a key consideration when introducing any new product to bitcoin's battle-heartened community. For Botanix, the unlocking innovation is the "Spiderchain," a novel cryptographic primitive that enables bitcoin scaling while maintaining full decentralization.
While communicating this innovative security model to the community has been a challenge, Painter said that even the most diehard hodl-ers are growing more comfortable with the concept:
While other similar bitcoin onchain finance solutions rely on bridges to other blockchains that pose security risks, Botanix operates entirely within the bitcoin ecosystem – minimizing the risk of funds lost due to bridge hacks and reliance on centralized custodians.
To ensure full decentralization of the network from the outset, governance of Botanix has been formally shifted away from Botanix Labs to an independent federation of 16 independent node operators, including Fireblocks, Galaxy, Alchemy, Kiln, XBTO, Antpool and others. There are plans to expand this federation to 100 operators by 2026.
In a statement, Botanix Labs co-founder Schroé elaborated:
The Botanix mainnet launch brings with it more than 40 new applications going live simultaneously, affording users the ability to trade, borrow, lend, stake, and provide liquidity to earn bitcoin native yield.
These applications include major protocols like the perpetuals decentralized exchange GMX and the Dolomite lending protocol, as well as bitcoin-native applications like Bitzy and Palladium, the world's first bitcoin-backed stablecoin.
Why the emphasis on yield generation? Because hardcore bitcoiners don't want to sell their coins, Painter explains. Rather, they want to use them as collateral to borrow against.
The team emphasizes that users of these applications will see a significantly improved user experience compared to bitcoin mainnet – namely five second block times on Botanix compared to 10 minutes on bitcoin – with average transaction fees of just $0.02.
While some factions argue that bringing programmability and related features to bitcoin is a diversion from its original vision and a potential security threat, Painter argues that bringing increased utility is essential for driving new adoption:
Bitcoin Programmability Key to Emerging Markets
For Painter, the launch represents more than just technological achievement. Rather, it's about fulfilling bitcoin's original promise as peer-to-peer electronic cash while addressing the financial inclusion challenges that first drew her to the space.
Her journey into Bitcoin began in 2015 while living in Brazil, where she encountered the same financial pain points that she had witnessed across other parts of the world: limited banking access, volatile national currencies, and barriers to moving money globally.
She saw how bitcoin could provide a pristine asset to populations who otherwise have no such access to something of such quality.
Furthermore, she emphasized that programmability and usability of bitcoin is critical to unlocking its full potential in underserved parts of the world: