Bringing smart contracts & deFi to Bitcoin

Bitcoin has always been known as digital gold, the most secure and decentralized money in the world. But until recently, it lacked the ability to support smart contracts and DeFi at scale. That is where Bitlayer, a Bitcoin Layer-2, comes in.

Bitlayer uses the BitVM paradigm to bring programmability to Bitcoin while maintaining Bitcoin level security. Users can pay gas fees directly in BTC, which makes transactions simple and natural for Bitcoin holders. The network also has a trust minimized bridge that issues 1:1 backed assets like YBTC, allowing people to put their Bitcoin to work in lending, liquidity, and yield strategies without leaving the ecosystem.

The numbers show strong adoption. Bitlayer currently secures around $430M in total value locked, ranking among the top Bitcoin Layer-2s, and has seen more than 51,000 active users in the past month. Looking forward, Bitlayer is preparing a major upgrade from a sidechain to a Bitcoin native rollup, which would bring greater decentralization and scalability.

The project also has strong backing in Asia, supported by a team with deep resources and community figures such as K-line Master and He Bi. One of the earliest exchanges to support Bitlayer was Bitget, which integrated the network before many others and continues to provide wallet support. Bitlayer is also preparing to launch its token, though the broader story remains focused on how the network is scaling Bitcoin for real-world use.

With its combination of smart contract support, secure bridging and upcoming rollup architecture, Bitlayer is quickly becoming one of the most interesting experiments in Bitcoin’s evolution, taking it beyond digital gold toward being the backbone of scalable DeFi.