Author| @botanix

Compiler| Wu Says Blockchain

TL;DR：

Botanix Network announces gradual shutdown, reminding users to withdraw assets by the deadline: The team has decided to end a four-year Bitcoin second-layer experiment and issues the most urgent reminder that users must withdraw Bitcoin and other assets by July 9, 2026, or other assets or tokens on the network may be permanently unretrievable.

The timing for Bitcoin's practicality has not arrived, DeFi demand still relies on Ethereum L2: The consensus in the real world still regards Bitcoin as a reserve asset. In practical applications, WBTC on Ethereum L2 has been able to meet most users' borrowing and earning needs; convenience has overcome the pure decentralization vision, resulting in the practical application scenarios for Bitcoin-specific L2 being far narrower than expected.

Token strategy has failed, on-chain economy concentrates on centralized distribution channels: The market no longer pays for a brainless token issuance strategy that lacks product-market fit (PMF). Simultaneously, the liquidity and user attention in the industry are accelerating towards platforms that have user entry points (such as major CEX and TradFi giants), while foundational infrastructure teams are facing a structural dilemma of rowing against the current.

Infrastructure costs exceed income, becoming the most fatal economic reality: The low-frequency storage users attracted by the network cannot generate enough high-frequency trading volume. With the trend of users moving towards convenient channels, the users remaining on the decentralized infrastructure layer have seen their maintenance costs far exceed the meager fee income they can bring.

BINK shows future experience, but the project as a whole chooses a dignified exit: The team launched BINK, the industry's first self-custodial Bitcoin bank supporting email login, in an attempt to break the deadlock, but there is no enough time to verify it in the current situation. The team stated that they would prefer to stop while their credibility and resources are intact rather than forcibly dragging this experiment into a meaningless dead end.

Botanix Labs completed an undisclosed $3 million Pre-Seed round around June 2023, led by UTXO Management among others; on May 7, 2024, it announced the completion of an $8.5 million Seed round, led by Polychain Capital, Placeholder Capital, Valor Equity Partners, and ABCDE, with several angel investors participating, bringing the total financing to $11.5 million.

With a heavy heart, we announce the gradual shutdown of the Botanix network.

This is the toughest decision we have made in four years. We have chosen to share the reasons behind this decision openly because those community members who support us, build alongside us, and use our products deserve a detailed explanation instead of a cold shutdown notice.

First, to the Botanix community, an urgent reminder: Please make sure to withdraw your Bitcoin and other assets by July 9, 2026.

At the project's launch in 2022, our vision could be summarized in one sentence: to bring true utility to Bitcoin. However, in actual implementation, what we have built over nearly four years is far grander and more complex than this phrase sounds. We attempted to create a blockchain based on Bitcoin, positioning it as a platform for Bitcoin applications to genuinely find a product-market fit (PMF); moreover, we firmly avoided stimulating growth, creating fake users, or fabricating utility through token issuance. Throughout the last cycle, almost all new chains employed the same script (forcibly issuing tokens without PMF, designing incentive mechanisms, and manipulating data), but we have never believed this to be a long-term feasible strategy. What we wanted to validate was whether a Bitcoin chain could honestly win users by relying solely on the products built on it and the market value generated by Bitcoin being the only core economic element.

It turns out we made it. The Spiderchain mainnet not only successfully launched but also ran stably for a whole year, maintaining a 100% uptime, with zero security incidents on this brand new cryptographic architecture. We built Dynafed, upgrading Spiderchain from a static multisig set to a rotating decentralized federation—this was considered an impossible technical milestone by most in the industry without sacrificing trust assumptions. We processed 25 million transactions, served 200,000 wallets, and on-chain fund flow reached tens of millions of dollars. Every piece of data was achieved through organic growth driven entirely by the product, with no token issuance, airdrops, rewards activities, or any tricks to create false prosperity. We integrated with Chainlink, Morpho, GMX, Dolomite, Fireblocks, Alchemy, Galaxy, and OKX Wallet. We also launched BINK, a new Bitcoin bank on iOS and Android, implementing the industry's first self-custodial Bitcoin wallet experience supporting email login, along with native Bitcoin yield and the world's lowest Bitcoin lending rates. All of this is built on our complete autonomy over the underlying infrastructure.

Saying this is not for self-justification. The protocol itself is not the problem, the product is indeed usable, and our team and ecosystem have worked together to deliver an excellent performance. We poured our whole heart into this experiment: the mainnet has been running for over a year, with the entire project taking nearly four years.

However, after experiencing the daily battles of the market, our honest conclusion is: it failed, at least under the current market environment and timing, this path is not feasible.

We want to share the lessons learned from this experience. It is necessary to be honest that there are conclusions we firmly believe in and speculations still in deduction. We prefer to clearly differentiate between the two rather than pretending to understand.

First, we must face the timing issue. Making Bitcoin practical, programmable, and truly integrated into financial activities is not yet the focus of real-world users. Current market consensus still lingers on Bitcoin's attributes as a reserve asset, its monetary and political status, and the underlying conservatism. These grand narratives are much more advanced than the focus Bitcoin L2 expects people to pay attention to. I still believe that Bitcoin will ultimately lead to practicality, but “believing the destination exists” and “predicting when we will arrive” are two different matters, and no one can do the latter. There is even a possibility: this destination may never arrive, and the end of Bitcoin is merely a reserve asset. If that is the case, what we have built will forever lack a market; pouring even more time and money will be for naught.

The second is the realistic dilemma of tokens. We originally did plan to issue tokens ultimately. We have always believed that tokens are a new form of equity closer to an IPO rather than an airdrop and should be launched when PMF is achieved and the timing is ripe. However, that so-called “mature timing” has never appeared. The increasingly evident trend in the past year is that the market is no longer buying into this narrative, even for relatively cautious token issuance projects. The overall performance of tokens in the industry has fallen short of expectations, and those projects that entered with tokens did not achieve the growth or PMF that the model was supposed to bring.

The third, what is the real demand for Bitcoin DeFi? For the vast majority of existing use cases (lending, yields, leverage exposure), using WBTC on mature general-purpose L2 is already completely sufficient. Users have voted with their feet: for almost anyone wanting to engage in Bitcoin-priced DeFi, the trust mechanism for Bitcoin being wrapped on Ethereum is acceptable. Decentralization is extremely important in principle and verbally; however, in practice, as long as there is a cheaper and more convenient option, users will definitely lean towards the latter. The security advantages of dedicated Bitcoin L2 do exist, but the scenarios in which they are truly applicable are far narrower than we imagined. This is the most vivid lesson the market has taught us.

The fourth is the structural trend. The on-chain economy is accelerating towards platforms that have control over “user entry points”: Hyperliquid, Robinhood, mainstream CEX, and TradFi giants that are rapidly siphoning attention, capital flows, and profits. Once convenience and institutional endorsement appear, they always win. As retail investors exit, this oligopolistic effect will only grow stronger. We have been, and still are, believers in decentralization, but the current logic of on-chain growth is “whoever has the channel gains the world,” and any team that is stubbornly sticking to foundational infrastructure at this time is rowing against the current. We are no exception.

The fifth lesson is the most painful point. The first two points directly crushed our business model. The users we attracted were primarily those saving Bitcoin and earning yields. This is a reasonable use case, but it cannot generate enough high-frequency trading volume, which is precisely the lifeline for networks like ours to earn fees. BINK was our attempt to break the deadlock: an app designed to bring Bitcoin and stablecoin daily payments on-chain, thereby increasing network trading volume. This was a correct strategic intuition, but unfortunately, we no longer have the chance to fully validate it. BINK was only just launched in the app store a few weeks ago; such products can only be launched once the underlying infrastructure is fully operational. As users move towards more convenient centralized channels and funds are siphoned away by giants, the users remaining on the decentralized infrastructure layer have seen their maintenance costs far exceed their income. The fixed costs of infrastructure are there, and our meager fee income is simply not enough.

We could have continued to hold on. However, when additional time and resources can no longer yield new insights, continuing to stubbornly push forward is no longer called belief; it is merely an illusion in the eyes of outsiders, while the core gradually deteriorates. We would prefer to stop dignifiedly now, preserving our credibility and remaining resources to properly accommodate those who have backed us, rather than forcing this experiment into a meaningless dead end.

Lastly, a reminder again: please withdraw all assets by July 9, 2026. Once the deadline passes, the federation will uniformly collect the remaining Bitcoin. From then on, any other assets or tokens on the network will be permanently unretrievable.

To our investors — you invested in a vision that struggles in reality; to our partners — you fought alongside us, even betting your own roadmap on us; to all developers who deployed on Spiderchain; to our users and the BINK community — you were willing to pay for new things and accompanied us throughout; finally, the deepest gratitude goes to every member of the Botanix team — it is you who have built a truly innovative system with rigor and dedication, making every difficult day worthwhile.

Thank you all, words fail to express.

免责声明：本文章仅代表作者个人观点，不代表本平台的立场和观点。本文章仅供信息分享，不构成对任何人的任何投资建议。用户与作者之间的任何争议，与本平台无关。如网页中刊载的文章或图片涉及侵权，请提供相关的权利证明和身份证明发送邮件到support@aicoin.com，本平台相关工作人员将会进行核查。