5 Exciting Projects Being Built on Bitcoin

In the early days of personal computing, the Windows operating system became number one not because it was the best but because it had the most distribution. The same could be happening with blockchains today — there’s a competition for who has the most users and developers. 

For Bitcoin to succeed, it’s not enough to be the best or most decentralized, it also has to be competitive and usable.

Bitcoin has a reputation of being boring, slow, and unchanging. So far, those are actually true for the base chain (layer 1) of Bitcoin, and this boringness is a strength that preserves its secure and decentralized nature.

At the same time, projects being built on top of Bitcoin lack the hype brought about by having a token that people can gamble with. This is probably why you’ve probably never heard of any of the exciting projects happening below: 

5 Exciting Projects Being Built on Bitcoin

1. The Lightning Network

With this layer 2 project, you can send bitcoins to anyone in the world instantaneously and with very low fees. It’s already supported by Cash App in the US that has 55 million users. This could change the way we do remittance and global money transfer. [Read more: Bitcoin and the Lightning Network: An Introduction to Scalability Solutions]

2. Ordinals, Inscriptions, BRC-20, and Runes

Protocols already exist that allow people to attach information to sats (the lowest denomination for bitcoins) therefore allowing both non-fungible and fungible tokens on Bitcoin. Popularity of minting these on Bitcoin soared so high that key thought leaders in the space are debating their usefulness since these are congesting block space and driving the price of fees up. [Read more: Runestone Airdrop – Bitcoin Ordinals Project 101]

3. BitVM

This project allows Bitcoin to have its own virtual machine similar to an Ethereum Virtual Machine or EVM, opening up the opportunity for Bitcoin to have smart contracts and allows many more layer 2 solutions and sidechains that can scale Bitcoin.

4. Spiderchain 

This scaling protocol brings EVMs or Ethereum Virtual Machines and proof-of-stake to Bitcoin, meaning you can copy and paste anything you do with Ethereum to Bitcoin. This opens up the potential for DeFi, staking, DEXs,stablecoins, and any existing popular use case to be possible with Bitcoin as well. 

5. Liquid Network

Liquid is a sidechain that allows tokenization among other things on Bitcoin. This opens up the opportunity of tokenizing real-world assets on Bitcoin. A hotel in El Salvador actually already has a plan to issue securities using this protocol.

There’re so many more projects out there being built. The lack of hype brought about by public speculation and gambling with tokens make these projects less attractive and less popular but I do believe some of these have great potential to change our world. 

This article is published on BitPinas: 5 Exciting Projects Being Built on Bitcoin

What else is happening: