As the Bitcoin faithful continue to try to bring decentralized finance to the number one cryptocurrency by market cap, developers continue to build layer 2 solutions that provide Bitcoin utility via Ethereum. One of these projects is Corn, a new layer 2 solution from BadgerDAO founder Chris Spadafora.
Corn will use Bitcoin for its gas costs, and Spadafora said it will ultimately bring to life the “pet rock” that is BTC.
In cryptocurrency, “gas” is the colloquial name for the fee required to execute transactions or execute smart contracts on a blockchain network such as Ethereum and Solana. A layer 2 solution refers to a blockchain network built on top of another, such as Arbitrum on Ethereum and the Lightning Network on Bitcoin.
“Our goal is really to make it easy for people to use [Bitcoin]because while there is a lot of great innovation happening in Bitcoin – which we are very excited about – Bitcoin today has essentially nothing to do with Bitcoin,” Spadafora shared. Declutter. “It’s still a pet rock, it’s in this cage and we need to get it out of there.”
The amount of activity and action around Bitcoin DeFi is enormous right now.
It was only a matter of time.
There has always been an “I love BTC, but I won’t say it out loud” atmosphere in the ETH community. That has changed and builders want access to that nice trillion dollar net new capital
— Spada₿oom 🌽 (@spadaboom1) August 14, 2024
To make this possible, Spadafora said Corn developed BTCN, a hybrid tokenized Bitcoin, which Corn said is backed 1:1 by native Bitcoin. The idea behind BTCN is to provide Bitcoin holders with multiple options for tokenizing their BTC so they can use it in decentralized ecosystems like Ethereum.
He said BTCN is different from other versions of packaged Bitcoin that use centralized intermediaries or decentralized protocols. He said BTCN will offer Bitcoin holders a choice regarding how their assets are held and used in different applications.
“By having to move to Ethereum or other assets, you have to give up exposure to Bitcoin,” Spadafora said. “I think there’s an inherent interest in maintaining exposure to Bitcoin, but in playing in the DeFi ecosystem – and not only being able to put it to work, but experimenting with new, fun things .
“That’s certainly what we’ve seen in the last few iterations of what’s come out of the DeFi world, and that will continue to happen in the future,” he added.
The project announced on Tuesday a $6.7 million fundraising led by Polychain Capital to facilitate the launch of the Corn ecosystem.
Others joining Polychain Capital in the investment round include Binance Labs, Framework Ventures, OKX Ventures and others, including Polygon’s Sandeep Nailwal and Udi Wertheimer of Taproot Wizards.
Edited by Ryan Ozawa.