妖币再现，比特币生态真有新东西了？

Recently, the new Bitcoin asset protocol Tacit has once again turned the market's attention to the Bitcoin ecosystem. And more recently, another 10x-level golden dog has emerged in the Bitcoin ecosystem, making everyone feel the familiar Ordi vibe is back. Why has the Bitcoin ecosystem been so hot lately? Is there really something new happening?

Bound Exchange

The predecessor of this platform was RadFi, which gained some traction before due to the "Node Monkey" strategy token $NODESTRAT. $NODESTRAT, similar to $PUNKSTR on Ethereum, uses trading fees to buy back NFTs, then lists them for sale at different profit targets, and uses the profits from NFT sales to buy back and burn tokens, creating a flywheel effect.

Previously, RadFi and Bound were separate businesses. RadFi handled Bitcoin/Rune AMM and Launchpad, while Bound focused on stablecoins. Now, the two have merged into Bound. The merged platform is quite comprehensive, covering trading, lending, Launchpad, and an NFT marketplace.

Bound caught the market's attention this time because its token, $Bound, has surged approximately 46x since May 21st.

Getting back to the project itself, the main points that have earned Bound praise are as follows:

Significantly Simplified Trading Process. Traditional Rune AMMs usually require depositing Bitcoin first and then waiting for several block confirmations. This confirmation time can be as short as half an hour, but in cases of slow block production, it can take over an hour. On Bound, besides depositing Bitcoin, users can also deposit SOL/ETH/HYPE/BNB, swap them for BTC via corresponding trading pairs, and then directly trade Rune tokens on the platform. The overall time is greatly reduced, naturally enhancing the user experience.

Instant Trade Confirmation. Eliminating the need to wait for slow Bitcoin block confirmations has always been a goal for Rune-related platforms in the Bitcoin ecosystem. This isn't particularly difficult; once funds are deposited and confirmed on the platform, trades can be processed internally or off-chain, using the Bitcoin mainnet merely as a settlement layer. The key issue, however, is solving the security problem. Previous platforms, like odin.fun, also gained popularity but faded away after repeated asset theft incidents. Bound's solution is to implement a 2-of-2 multi-signature scheme for user asset storage addresses. One signature is held by the user (stored as a passkey on their device), and the other is held by the platform's backend.

This means that even if the Bound platform is hacked, assets cannot be stolen, as the hacker can only compromise one layer of the signature. Another question remains: what if the platform itself runs away with the funds? To address this, Bound adds a time lock. If Bound's signature expires after 3 months, the user can withdraw their assets directly using only their own passkey.

Price Protection Mechanism. Bound's official Twitter account retweeted @SkyAAmen's explanation of this mechanism: "After a Rune token launched via the Launchpad goes live, its price is calculated based on the average mint price. 75% of the raised liquidity is placed below this price as a support floor to absorb potential selling pressure, while the remaining 25% is paired above this price."

For token issuance, Bound also introduces a virtual mempool, which can be understood as a virtual chain tracking the Bitcoin mainnet's block production. Users minting new Rune tokens on the Launchpad don't need to pay fees to miners; those funds are instead used for the price support and liquidity provision mentioned above. Additionally, to reward holding, holders who mint 1 million tokens or more and do not sell them can share 50% of the trading fees.

These 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, remains stable, with a market cap of approximately $5.5 million. The developer, @z0r0zzz, continues to push high-frequency updates. On May 23rd, they implemented double-blind tokens on Bitcoin, further enhancing the protocol's privacy features. They are also working on updating a permissionless ETH-BTC bridge using SP1 zero-knowledge proofs.

Alkanes

We have also introduced Alkanes before: Another 10x Player Emerges in the Bitcoin Ecosystem: What is the New Asset Protocol Alkanes? This protocol gained attention because $DIESEL has risen approximately 17x since the end of April and is still climbing:

Alkanes is not a new protocol. In fact, Oyl Wallet, which initially led its development, is no longer involved. The current team responsible for updates and maintenance, subfrost, is actually the original technical team from Oyl Wallet that handled Alkanes. Although Oyl disbanded, the subfrost team has continued to push updates, including significant speed optimizations like embedding contracts directly into the indexer.

However, the massive surge in $DIESEL is likely also due to its very small circulating supply. Under the previous mining mechanism, the single mint transaction paying the highest fee in a block would win all the $DIESEL rewards for that block. This essentially meant it was dominated by bots, making it difficult for regular users to participate. But in August last year, the mining mechanism was updated so that all successfully participating mint transactions receive a portion of the block's $DIESEL rewards proportional to their bid amount. In other words, those who believe in the value of $DIESEL will mine more. Mining has become a small event happening every block, with a fixed total reward (the current block reward is approximately 3.125 $DIESEL, synchronized with the Bitcoin halving cycle), but the bidding competition within each block can vary.

At the same time, 50% of the funds used for bidding to mint $DIESEL in a block is converted to $DIESEL and flows to the project's treasury for protocol development. So, while a single block produces about 3.125 $DIESEL, the actual amount users can mint is less, as a portion goes directly to the project team.

$DIESEL has a total supply of 1,562,000 tokens. Currently, approximately 640,000 have been mined and are in circulation, but the actually tradeable amount might be less than 10% of the total supply. Given this recent surge in price, I would call it the "meme coin" of the Bitcoin ecosystem.