Botanix Failure Raises Questions About Bitcoiners’ DeFi Interest
Bitcoin DeFi is struggling to move beyond the promise stage, and the shutdown of Botanix earlier this month has become a new stress test for the idea of “programmable Bitcoin.” The closure—after nearly four years of work and about a year of mainnet uptime—raises a hard question f...
➤ The shutdown of Botanix, a Bitcoin DeFi scaling project, highlights challenges in achieving sustainable usage and economic viability for 'programmable Bitcoin'. ➤ Despite technical ambition, Botanix cited insufficient demand for its services to cover infrastructure costs, a pattern seen across BTCFi where users often treat Bitcoin primarily as a store-of-value collateral. ➤ The article suggests that while Bitcoin's role as 'pristine collateral' is growing, its adoption as a standalone DeFi execution layer faces hurdles due to user behavior, competition from wrapped BTC on established EVM ecosystems, and the need for greater trust and institutional-grade risk frameworks.
