Botanix Labs has officially launched its mainnet, introducing what it calls the first fully decentralized, EVM-equivalent Bitcoin layer-2.
Live today, Botanix promises Bitcoiners access to DeFi features familiar to Ethereum users — such as trading, borrowing, lending, staking, LPing — but denominated natively in Bitcoin, with transaction finality in five seconds and average fees around $0.02.
Unlike typical federated sidechains or custodial bridges, Botanix relies on a novel security model called Spiderchain. This design uses BTC-staked Orchestrator nodes, selected via randomness sourced from Bitcoin block hashes, to manage a rotating multisig peg-in/peg-out system. State transitions are also anchored back to Bitcoin itself.
This combination of proof-of-stake-style incentives with direct Bitcoin anchoring, aims to provide a middle ground between Ethereum’s flexibility and Bitcoin’s security principles.
Earlier this week, Botanix finalized its founding 16-node federation, featuring Galaxy, Fireblocks, and Alchemy, among other recognizable names. The governance transition removes operational control from Botanix Labs, distributing consensus and custody among independent operators. The network is designed to expand into a permissionless set of over 100 nodes by next year.
For users, the Spiderchain peg offers a crucial promise: fast exit back to Bitcoin itself, according to Willem Schroé, CEO and co-Founder of Botanix Labs:
“One of the interesting things about the Spiderchain is you can immediately withdraw back to Bitcoin, so you won’t have any liquidation or redeemability risks,” Schroé told Blockworks.
That design choice directly addresses longstanding criticisms of wrapped bitcoin models on Ethereum, which depend on either centralized custodians to process redemptions, opaque validator sets, or multi-day unbonding periods. Botanix’s rotating multisig aims to make these risks transparent, economically secure, and Bitcoin-native, in the sense that you can exit to Bitcoin permissionlessly.
Beyond bridging, Botanix aims to distinguish itself via a mainnet-ready DeFi ecosystem. For example, at launch, GMX and Dolomite are live, enabling spot and perp trading, lending, and borrowing, as are Chainlink feeds.
The network also supports novel Bitcoin-native protocols like Rover and Palladium. Rover enables liquid staking of BTC itself, with yields funded directly by network gas fees. Unstaking remains possible without delay.
“All our gas fees are in Bitcoin,” Schroe said. “50% of all the gas fees go to a singular staking vault where you can stake your Bitcoin.”
Jerry Pio, head of partnerships at Rover developer Hydrogen Labs, was attracted by Botanix’s bitcoin-focus.
“It’s the least ruggable of all Bitcoin L2s, given the peg-in/peg-out mechanism, the Spiderchain architecture,” Jerry told Blockworks.
Palladium, meanwhile, is launching as a CDP-style protocol, based on Liquity V1, where users can borrow a stablecoin, PUSD, interest-free, backed by BTC collateral. That opens up the kind of composable credit layer that has defined DeFi on Ethereum, but without introducing a non-Bitcoin collateral.
As for adoption, Botanix is rolling out a large-scale promotional campaign that pays homage to Bitcoin’s early culture. Users can claim free BTC via faucet-style giveaways and explore “Bitcoin 2100,” a retro-futuristic video game world that introduces the dapps live on Botanix.
Seeing is believing, as Schroé put it:
“The moment you see your Bitcoin move at 5-second block times [and] you see these applications, that’s when you start to realize, damn, things are actually happening.”
By combining Bitcoin’s security model with Ethereum’s virtual machine, Botanix is betting that its architecture facilitates a DeFi ecosystem that Bitcoiners will actually use, seeing it as a way to do more with their BTC without sacrificing the principles that made Bitcoin worth building on in the first place.
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