Introduction to Botanix Labs

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What is Botanix Labs?

Botanix Labs is building the infrastructure to transform Bitcoin from the best money ever made to the programmable layer that will serve as the basis for the future of finance. Our approach is to build the first fully decentralized EVM-equivalent Layer 2 on Bitcoin, where the ease and versatility of EVM meets the decentralization and security of Bitcoin.

Leveraging Bitcoin's Proof-of-Work (PoW) as a Layer 1 for base settlement and decentralization, Botanix will use a Proof-of-Stake (PoS) consensus model, where the stakes (represented by bitcoin) are securely stored on the Spiderchain, a distributed network of decentralized multisigs safeguarded by a randomized subset of participants. Anyone will be able to stake their bitcoin on Bitcoin.

Why did we found Botanix Labs?

Bitcoin currently serves as a form of digital gold, with considerable asset hardness. However, there is limited decentralized application (dApp) development compared to Ethereum's Virtual Machine (EVM) ecosystem. Botanix Labs wants to potentialize the Bitcoin network as the base programmable layer with the ease of EVM.

Bitcoin, the largest digital currency, boasts an unparalleled degree of decentralization and resistance to censorship. It forms the bedrock of the Spiderchain, providing a highly secure and decentralized network. However, due to its inherent Proof-of-Work (PoW) finality, Bitcoin's transaction processing tends to be slower compared to other blockchain platforms. Additionally, the limited software language of Bitcoin presents challenges for application development, often requiring significantly more time and effort in comparison to Ethereum.

On the other hand, Ethereum has emerged as the favoured blockchain for creating dApps. Its user-friendly development interface and advanced Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) enable developers to accelerate the launch of new products. Ethereum's extensive tooling and infrastructure, including wallets and resources, contribute to a thriving ecosystem. Nevertheless, Ethereum's Proof-of-Stake consensus mechanism on L1 introduces security trade-offs and a potential trend towards centralization, impacting the censorship resistance of the currency.

How does the Botanix EVM work?

The Botanix EVM is a decentralized Turing-complete Layer 2 EVM built on the native currency of bitcoin. It operates using two core components:

• The Ethereum Virtual Machine: Fortified by a Proof of Stake consensus protocol that leverages Bitcoin's Proof of Work for superior security. Stakes are represented by actual bitcoin stored securely within multi-signature wallets on the Bitcoin network.

• The Spiderchain: A dynamic and ever-evolving set of decentralized multisigs that secure all the actual bitcoin on Botanix. The Spiderchain pioneers "decentralized multisigs" that consists of a distributed network of multisigs, safeguarded by a randomized subset of participants, making it a truly decentralized protection mechanism.

Vision

Since the launch of the Bitcoin whitepaper, there is no clarity yet on how the future crypto infrastructure will look like. Multiple new blockchains and smart contract programming languages with respective application ecosystems have emerged. Different properties like composability, speed, privacy and decentralization each play a role. However, we argue that the most important property that underlies any of the others is decentralization. On a long enough timeline, all other properties are lost if a trusted third party is required. Bitcoin as a base layer is optimized to be as decentralized and secure as possible. This makes it suited as a global reserve currency but comes with tradeoffs like composability and scalability. While the lightning network shows very promising results to solve for instant and free payments, the question remains on how to bring smart contracts to Bitcoin.

Ethereum has seen a massive growth in decentralized finance applications that are mostly unavailable on Bitcoin. The total value on the second layers of Bitcoin is less than 0.1% of the market cap of Bitcoin while at the same time the value of wrapped Bitcoin available on Ethereum is higher than 2%. Bitcoin has not seen the massive growth in TVL (Total value locked) on its second layers or in its applications.

Botanix Labs proposes a second layer built on top of Bitcoin with full Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) equivalence. With Bitcoin as the most decentralised and secure bottom layer, the second layer will open the doors to the composability, ecosystem and capabilities of Ethereum smart contracts. We introduce the Spiderchain primitive, a second layer design on top of Bitcoin that is optimised for decentralization.