It's great that the cryptocurrency ecosystem is witnessing a great wave of innovation, well, mainly business developers running numbers to attract VC funding but still, isn't that all part of building economic volume?
That quite frankly is why it strikes me as a comical coincidence that “MeZo” is dubbed “Bitcoin's Economic Layer” so I thought “That Might Actually Work.”
Layer 2 is the Future?
Like most things, when I come to understand better than the first day of stumbling on them, I have a love-hate relationship for so-called “layer 2” networks.
The reason is majorly because the people behind these services lie way too much. Reading their docs and whitepaper pdfs is like reading a TOS of a Big Tech, so much nonsense spread across the whole thing just to effectively hide the true realities that's there.
For instance, most layer 2s are heavily centralized but if you went on YouTube and ran a search about them you'd find contents from numerous channels calling them “decentralized networks.”
You can't blame the content creators honestly, majority of them are not researchers and frankly, true researchers don't get paid enough for what they uncover and present in a simple to understand language, so why would content creators looking to rack in some ad money daily want to spend days flipping every documentation out there just to fully grasp and publicize the “most accurate” information about a network?
That doesn't afford them a lambo quick enough.
That said, layer 2s are the future and my love-hate relationship with them changes nothing. Ethereum already has like 60? of ‘em and Arbitrum dominates the ecosystem.
Bitcoin, has recently been having a network of people looking to launch atop it, I mean, it's a wise marketing ploy with governments of the world actively exploring the asset for investment, so much as being a “potential” reserve asset.
We've always known that Bitcoin's rusty tech(fees and block design) making it a highly secured chain positions it as one of the best “collateral options,” so no surprises there.
Notwithstanding, Layer 2 on Bitcoin, just as with Ethereum just means a multisig wallet with 9 signers requiring at most 5 signatures for upgrades, holding control over everyone's Bitcoin that is bridged onto the fancy and fast new chain that will 99% of the time claim to be using Bitcoin's holy tech.
I sound so much like a hater, information does something to people I guess.
$156 million already betting on MeZo’s success
Before I say exactly what this $156 million is, let's talk about the first mentioned figures in this article.
$28.5 million raised, yes, across two rounds actually. The first funding round(Series A) in April 2024 attracted $21 million, led by Pantera Capital and the second(strategic) is recent, reported July 26, attracting $7.5 million, bringing the total to $28.5 million.
I was attracted by these raised funds reports and wanted to find out what MeZo was building as a layer 2 on Bitcoin as though the LN doesn't often strike me as a regular layer 2 designed to generate significant cash flow.
The reason I believe layer 2s are going to be a big part of crypto’s economy is that they will serve as a primary business layer. Semi-decentralized, scalable and more team-central, these things come with certain merits that can't be found sticking to layer 1.
That said, this is obviously not a promotion of MeZo, but the project has already attracted $156 million in TVL, with 2,101 BTC committed by 13,110 addresses making up most of that value.
Impressive no?
I am particularly intrigued as I know this whole “economic layer” thing is just a way of avoiding saying “DeFi on Bitcoin” - gotta be unique right? which is much needed on an extensive level. Assets holders having options to earn additional yield for holding their bags and effectively keeping a market from crashing to zero is always going to be applaudable.
Such a level of incentive on Bitcoin would have its own price impact given that when people begin to understand how “holding” BTC would mean multiple layers of incentives like price appreciation incentives, yields from staking, or lending, and so on, on a Bitcoin-native environment, the asset becomes even more market attractive.