Mysterious coins reappear – Is there actually something new in the Bitcoin ecosystem?
- Core Insight: The Bitcoin ecosystem has recently heated up again due to new protocols (Tacit, Alkanes) and exchange platform innovations (Bound Exchange), but the driving forces are largely solving infrastructure issues like 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 multisig (with a time lock), enabling instant transaction confirmation and addressing asset security issues.
- Bound's price protection mechanism allocates 75% of liquidity for price support and 25% for pairing during token issuance, introducing a virtual mempool to save on miner fees.
- The $BOUND token has risen approximately 46 times since May 21st, with market attention focused on its interactive experience and security design.
- 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 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 remains stable, and the developers maintain a high-intensity update pace.
The recent emergence of the new Bitcoin asset protocol Tacit has reignited the market's attention on the Bitcoin ecosystem. More recently, the ecosystem has seen new "10x golden dogs," making everyone exclaim that the familiar vibe of ordinals is back. Why has the Bitcoin ecosystem become so hot lately? Are genuinely new things 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 use transaction fees to buy back NFTs, list them for sale at different profit targets, and then use the profits from NFT sales to buy back and burn tokens, 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 features, covering trading, lending, Launchpad, and NFT marketplace.
The recent market attention on Bound stems from its token $Bound, which has surged approximately 46-fold from its price on May 21.
Looking at the project itself, the main points praised by the community are as follows:
Significantly simplified trading process. Traditional Rune AMMs usually require depositing Bitcoin first, then waiting for several block confirmations. This confirmation time can be as short as half an hour, or could take over an hour if blocks are not being produced. On Bound, users can deposit not only Bitcoin but also SOL/ETH/HYPE/BNB, swap them for BTC using the corresponding trading pair, and then directly trade on the platform's Rune tokens. The overall time is drastically reduced, greatly enhancing the user experience.
Instant transaction confirmation. Avoiding the long wait for Bitcoin block confirmations has always been a goal for Bitcoin ecosystem Rune platforms. This isn't particularly difficult; once funds are deposited and confirmed, transactions can be processed internally/off-chain, using the Bitcoin mainnet as a settlement layer. The key challenge, however, is solving the security problem. Previous platforms, like odin.fun, were popular but faded after repeated asset theft incidents. Bound's solution involves adding a 2-of-2 multi-signature to users' asset storage addresses. One key 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 because the hacker can only compromise one layer of the signature. But what if the platform itself 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 Twitter account retweeted @SkyAAmen's explanation of this mechanism: "After a Rune token launched via 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."
In terms of token issuance, Bound also introduces a virtual mempool, which can be understood as a virtual chain tracking Bitcoin mainnet block production. Users minting new Rune tokens on the Launchpad do not need to pay miners; those funds are instead used for the aforementioned price support and providing liquidity. Furthermore, to incentivize holding, holders who mint 1 million or more tokens and do not sell can share 50% of the trading fees.
The above three points are the main advantages. Additionally, Leonidas, a prominent figure in the Bitcoin ecosystem, has expressed support for Bound:
Tacit
BlockBeats previously published a detailed article introducing Tacit:
New Protocol Tacit, the Zcash of the Bitcoin Ecosystem
Currently, Tacit's leading token $TAC maintains a stable price, corresponding to a market cap of approximately $5.5 million. The developer @z0r0zzz continues to release updates at a high frequency. On May 23, they implemented a dual-blind token on Bitcoin, further enhancing the protocol's privacy features. They are also developing a permissionless ETH-BTC bridge using SP1 zero-knowledge proofs.
Alkanes
We have also introduced Alkanes before: Bitcoin Ecosystem Sees Another 10x Opportunity, What is the New Asset Protocol Alkanes? This protocol has gained attention because $DIESEL has surged approximately 17-fold since late April and is still climbing:
Alkanes is not a new protocol. In fact, Oyl Wallet, which originally led its development, is no longer involved. The current team responsible for updates and maintenance, Subfrost, is actually the same technical team that handled Alkanes within Oyl Wallet. Although Oyl disbanded, the Subfrost team has continued to make updates, including significant performance optimizations like embedding contracts directly into the indexer.
However, the sharp rise in $DIESEL is likely also due to its very small circulating supply. Under the previous mining mechanism for $DIESEL, the single mint transaction paying the highest miner fee within each block captured all the $DIESEL rewards for that block. This basically meant bots dominated the process, making it difficult for regular users to participate in minting. But in August of last year, the mining mechanism was updated so that all successful minting transactions in a block share the block's $DIESEL rewards proportionally based on their bid amounts. In other words, those who believe in the value of $DIESEL will mine more. Mining has become a small auction occurring 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 varies.
Concurrently, 50% of all funds used to bid for minting $DIESEL within a block is converted into $DIESEL and directed to the project's treasury for protocol development. So, although the block reward is roughly 3.125 $DIESEL, users don't actually receive that full amount from minting, as a portion flows directly to the project team.
The total supply of $DIESEL is 1,562,000 tokens. Currently, approximately 640,000 tokens have been mined and are circulating, but the actual tradeable amount might be less than 10% of the total supply. Considering this recent astronomical price increase, I'd call it the "meme token" of the Bitcoin ecosystem.
