Last weekend, a friend sent me a DeFi project that has recently gained popularity in the Bitcoin ecosystem.

I took a close look and believe that although this project has innovations, there are still security risks at a certain key technical point, so I am not very optimistic about it.

After reviewing this project, I naturally thought of a bigger topic: Is there still an opportunity for the Bitcoin ecosystem?

When we discuss the Bitcoin ecosystem, we are clearly not comparing it to Ethereum's layer two scaling solutions, but rather to a layer one blockchain ecosystem like Ethereum.

Speaking of layer one blockchain ecosystems, I previously listed three important criteria when sharing my views on the Ethereum ecosystem:

First, is the underlying blockchain sufficiently decentralized?

Second, can it form a certain threshold within the ecosystem?

Third, is there a strong and cohesive team/community that can continuously lead this blockchain in technical updates and meet new requirements?

Among these three criteria, I believe Bitcoin has no major issues with the first point. However, there is a significant gap and potential problems with the latter two.

Let's first look at the ecological threshold.

Ethereum has been around for a full 10 years since its inception. It has taken nearly a decade to establish a complex ecosystem. The scale and synergy effects generated by this ecosystem present a considerable barrier for other blockchain ecosystems trying to catch up.

However, if we rewind two years or even earlier, if someone had asked me which blockchain might catch up to Ethereum in terms of ecosystem, I might have answered Bitcoin.

At that time, Bitcoin had a strong advantage in consensus and decentralization, and this advantage is something that other blockchains might struggle to replace. Bitcoin still had the opportunity to develop its ecosystem and catch up.

But this development must be rapid; time is of the essence. If the Bitcoin ecosystem does not quickly leverage this advantage to establish its own ecosystem and close the gap with Ethereum, once the final node has passed, it may be too late to develop the ecosystem.

Historically, there have been many cases where the technologies that ultimately became popular and widespread were not the most advanced or excellent at the beginning. Those initially advanced and excellent technologies often missed the opportunity for widespread adoption, thus giving market opportunities to competitors.

In my view, the inscription ecosystem from two years ago was the last opportunity for the Bitcoin ecosystem to develop.

Unfortunately, Bitcoin missed it.

Since the beginning of this year, we have seen more clearly that institutional investors have begun to enter and position themselves in Ethereum, not only treating it as an asset but also as a foundational platform for future ecosystem development.

Recent news has continuously reported on traditional institutions issuing assets on Ethereum and conducting experiments.

At the current pace, in another year or two, when a large number of institutions have issued assets or established their own ecosystems on Ethereum, how many institutions will choose to build their ecosystems on Bitcoin, even if Bitcoin has a nascent ecosystem by then?

Moreover, given another year or two, whether Bitcoin can establish its own secure and stable technical platform to support the upper-layer ecosystem remains a huge unknown.

Therefore, from the perspective of ecological thresholds, the opportunity for the Bitcoin ecosystem to gain momentum (rather than just making small moves) now seems quite slim.

Now let's look at the team and community.

The Bitcoin community is fine, but the team is a significant issue.

The advancement and development of a blockchain ecosystem must have a strong team. Because applications and models are constantly evolving and changing, it inevitably requires technology to keep pace with the times and continuously update.

Take the ZK (Zero-Knowledge Proof) technology that Ethereum is focusing on advancing next; it has two main goals:

First, to improve performance, and second, to enhance transaction privacy.

Especially the latter, "transaction privacy," has long been widely criticized by commercial users.

In a transaction between two merchants, if placed on the blockchain, all information is transparent and public. This is a disaster for many commercial users, as it would leak their business secrets. Therefore, this has long been one of the significant obstacles to Ethereum's slow promotion in commercial applications.

The realization and deployment of ZK technology will require significant modifications to Ethereum, necessitating a hard fork. Such forks can be easily implemented on Ethereum but are extremely difficult to achieve on Bitcoin—because the Core team, which manages updates to Bitcoin's core code, almost refuses any changes that could complicate Bitcoin.

This situation with Bitcoin is a significant barrier to the evolution and development of its ecosystem in the long run.

Therefore, overall, it seems that it is already quite difficult for Bitcoin to develop its ecosystem now.

We are scheduled for an online discussion on September 13, 2025 (this Saturday) at 7:30 PM.

Last time, we could not have a discussion due to network issues. This time, I will try to choose a good network. I suggest that if anyone has questions and is worried about not being able to communicate online at that time, please try to post your questions in the comments of this post.

https://x.com/Dao_Views/status/1964855926403612862

免责声明：本文章仅代表作者个人观点，不代表本平台的立场和观点。本文章仅供信息分享，不构成对任何人的任何投资建议。用户与作者之间的任何争议，与本平台无关。如网页中刊载的文章或图片涉及侵权，请提供相关的权利证明和身份证明发送邮件到support@aicoin.com，本平台相关工作人员将会进行核查。