The strange coins are back—has the Bitcoin ecosystem actually found something new?
- Core Thesis: The Bitcoin ecosystem has recently heated up again due to new protocols (Tacit, Alkanes) and innovations in trading platform functionality (Bound Exchange). However, the driving forces behind this are mostly aimed at solving infrastructure issues such as transaction efficiency, security, and liquidity distribution, rather than major technological breakthroughs.
- Key Elements:
- Bound Exchange simplifies the Runes AMM process through off-chain trading and a 2-of-2 multi-signature (including a timelock), achieving instant transaction confirmations and addressing asset security issues.
- Bound's price protection mechanism allocates 75% of liquidity for price support and 25% for pairing during token issuance, and introduces a virtual mempool to save on miner fees.
- The $BOUND token has risen up to approximately 46 times since May 21, with market focus centered on its interaction experience and security design.
- The Alkanes protocol token $DIESEL has risen approximately 17 times, but its actual circulating supply is less than 10% of the total. Its mining mechanism has been changed to distribution based on bid proportion.
- The Tacit protocol is developing an ETH-BTC bridge based on SP1 zero-knowledge proofs, and has already implemented a dual-blind token function on Bitcoin, enhancing privacy features.
- The $TAC token has a market cap of approximately $5.5 million, its price has remained stable, and developers have maintained a high intensity of updates.
The recent emergence of the new Bitcoin asset protocol Tacit has once again drawn market attention to the Bitcoin ecosystem. More recently, a new 10x-level golden dog has appeared in the Bitcoin ecosystem, making everyone exclaim that the familiar ordi vibe is back. Why has the Bitcoin ecosystem become so hot lately? Is there genuinely something new emerging?
Bound Exchange
The predecessor of this platform was Radfi, which previously gained traction for a while due to the "Node Monkey" strategy token $NODESTRAT. $NODESTRAT is similar to Ethereum's $PUNKSTR, both using transaction fees to repurchase NFTs, which are then listed for sale at different profit targets. The profits from NFT sales are then partially used to buy back and burn the token, creating a flywheel effect.
Previously, the Radfi and Bound businesses were separate. Radfi focused on Bitcoin/Rune AMM and Launchpad, while Bound handled stablecoins. Now, the two have merged into Bound. The merged platform boasts comprehensive functionality, covering everything from trading, lending, and Launchpad to an NFT marketplace.
The reason Bound caught the market's attention this time is that its token $Bound has surged approximately 46-fold since May 21.
Getting back to the project itself, the main points for which Bound is praised are as follows:
The trading process has been greatly simplified. Traditional Rune AMMs generally require depositing Bitcoin first, then waiting for several block confirmations. This confirmation time can be as short as half an hour, but can extend to over an hour if blocks are not being produced. On Bound, in addition to Bitcoin, you can also deposit SOL/ETH/HYPE/BNB, swap them for BTC via the corresponding BTC trading pair, and then directly trade Rune tokens on the platform. The overall time required is significantly reduced, naturally enhancing the user experience.
Transactions are confirmed instantly. Eliminating the long wait for Bitcoin block confirmations has always been a goal for Bitcoin ecosystem platforms dealing with Runes. This isn't particularly difficult—once funds are deposited and confirmed on the platform, transactions are processed internally/off-chain, using the Bitcoin mainnet merely as a settlement layer. However, the key challenge is solving the security issue. Previous platforms like odin.fun were also popular for a time, but they fizzled out after repeated incidents of asset theft. Bound's solution is to add a 2-of-2 multi-signature to user asset storage addresses—one signature is held by the user (a passkey stored on their device), and the other is held by the platform's backend.
This means that even if the Bound platform is hacked, the assets cannot be stolen, as the hacker can only solve one layer of the signature. Another question arises: what if the platform exits scams? To address this, Bound adds a time lock. If Bound's signature expires after 3 months, users can directly withdraw their assets using their own passkey.
Price protection mechanism. Bound's official account retweeted a post by @SkyAAmen explaining this mechanism: "After a Rune token launched via Launchpad goes live, its token price is calculated based on the average price at mint. 75% of the raised liquidity is placed below this price as a cushion against potential selling pressure, and the remaining 25% is paired above this price."
In the token issuance part, Bound also introduces a virtual mempool, which can be understood as a virtual chain tracking Bitcoin mainnet block production. When users mint new Rune coins on the Launchpad, they no longer need to pay fees to miners; instead, the fees are used for the aforementioned price protection and providing liquidity. Additionally, to incentivize holding, holders who mint 1 million tokens or more and do not sell them can share 50% of the transaction fees.
The above three points are the main advantages. Furthermore, prominent Bitcoin ecosystem figure Leonidas has also expressed support for Bound:
Tacit
BlockBeats previously published a detailed article introducing Tacit:
New Protocol Tacit: The ZEC of the Bitcoin Ecosystem
Currently, Tacit's leading token, $TAC, maintains a stable price, corresponding to a market cap of approximately $5.5 million. Developer @z0r0zzz continues to push high-frequency updates. On May 23, a dual-blind token on Bitcoin was implemented, further enhancing the protocol's privacy features. Additionally, a permissionless ETH-BTC bridge utilizing SP1 zero-knowledge proofs is being developed.
Alkanes
We have introduced Alkanes before: Another 10x Opportunity Emerges in the Bitcoin Ecosystem: What is the New Asset Protocol Alkanes? The protocol gained attention because $DIESEL has surged approximately 17x since the end of April, and is still rising:
Alkanes is not a new protocol. In fact, Oyl Wallet, which originally led its development, is no longer involved. The team now responsible for protocol updates and maintenance, subfrost, is actually the same technical team from Oyl Wallet that handled Alkanes. Although Oyl disbanded, the subfrost team has been consistently updating the protocol, implementing significant optimizations like integrating contracts directly into the indexer for faster performance.
However, the substantial price increase of $DIESEL is likely primarily due to its very small circulating supply. Under the previous mining mechanism for $DIESEL, the single mint transaction paying the highest miner fee in each block would receive all the $DIESEL rewards for that block. This essentially meant scientists dominated the process, making it difficult for regular users to participate in minting. However, in August last year, the mining mechanism was updated so that all successfully participating mint transactions share the block's $DIESEL rewards proportionally based on their bid amounts. This means that those who believe in $DIESEL's value will mine more, transforming mining into a continuous, small-scale process per block. The total reward per block is fixed (currently around 3.125 $DIESEL, synchronized with the Bitcoin halving cycle), but the bidding competition within each block varies.
At the same time, 50% of all bid funds for minting $DIESEL within a block is converted into $DIESEL and flows to the project's treasury for protocol development. So, while each block produces approximately 3.125 $DIESEL, users do not actually receive the full minted amount, as a portion directly goes to the project team.
The total supply of $DIESEL is 1,562,000 tokens. Currently, approximately 640,000 have been mined and are technically in circulation, but the actual amount available for trading might be less than 10% of the total supply. Given such a recent high price surge, I would dub it the "meme token" of the Bitcoin ecosystem.
