A ten-year veteran of the industry, from Polkadot to Polygon, is now betting on Bitcoin again.
Charlie Hu @CharlieHusats, an entrepreneur who was an early evangelist for Polkadot and head of Polygon in the Asia-Pacific region, is trying to build a true "computing layer" for Bitcoin with Bitlayer.
Bitlayer @BitlayerLabs was born in 2023 during the inscription and BRC-20 craze. Charlie and tech geek Kevin He started with BitVM technology, choosing to achieve cross-chain and programmable expansion without the need for a hard fork of the Bitcoin mainnet.
Since the mainnet went live in 2024, Bitlayer's on-chain transaction volume has exceeded 71 million, its TVL peak is nearly $900 million, and it has repeatedly topped the DefiLlama Bitcoin Layer 2 list. The team members come from Polygon, Huobi Public Chain, Alibaba Super Chain, Celestia, etc., and R&D accounts for more than 60%.
On August 27, Bitlayer officially launched the public offering (TGE) of its governance token BTR, which is not only a financing move, but also marks its entry into the community and ecological expansion stage. The project has previously received support from institutions such as Polychain, Franklin Templeton, StarkWare, and OKX Ventures, with a total financing of over $25 million.
Bitlayer has also partnered with Antpool, F2Pool, and SpiderPool to further enhance its Bitcoin ecosystem position.
In the crowded and high-mortality Bitcoin Layer 2 track, Bitlayer's survival logic lies in differentiation: first, the BitVM path is pragmatic and feasible, taking into account security and programmability; second, the team's background and execution enable it to complete the mainnet launch earlier and attract institutional attention; and third, the combination of Eastern and Western resources, deploying YBTC on the chain and promoting the implementation of blue-chip DeFi protocols.
However, Charlie admitted that the development of BTCFi has not been as rapid as originally envisioned. After the inscription craze subsided, the only direction that can truly attract institutional funds is sustainable DeFi applications.
The current bull market is driven by ETF and over-the-counter institutional buying. Bitlayer's strategy is to position itself as "institutional-grade Bitcoin financial infrastructure," releasing BTC liquidity through decentralized bridges and Rollup solutions, allowing holders (whether retail investors or MicroStrategy-style whales) to obtain long-term returns within the DeFi system.
Looking ahead, Bitlayer plans to expand the YBTC scale to more than 10,000 BTC by the end of the year, and continue to promote deployment cooperation with protocols such as Aave and Morpho.
Bitlayer 2.0's BitVM Bridge has been launched on the mainnet Beta, the Rollup verification layer is in the final audit stage, and the V3 version is targeting a "Bitcoin computing layer" with high throughput and low latency.