Botanix, a Bitcoin Layer-2 project built to bring Ethereum-style apps to Bitcoin, is winding down after its bet on organic Bitcoin DeFi demand failed to turn into a sustainable network business.
The team said in a Tuesday post on X that users should withdraw BTC and other tokens before July 9, 2026. After that date, Botanix said any Bitcoin left on the network will be collected by the group of operators that helps run the chain, while any other tokens still left there "will unfortunately be unrecoverable."
- Founded in 2022 by Willem Schroé, Botanix was aimed at building a Bitcoin-native DeFi ecosystem through Spiderchain, an Ethereum-compatible Layer 2 network on Bitcoin.
- The project secured $11.5 million in total funding, including an $8.5 million seed round backed by Polychain Capital, Placeholder Capital, Valor Equity Partners and ABCDE, after an earlier $3 million pre-seed. Botanix didn't disclose a valuation.
Botanix noted that Spiderchain ran for a year on mainnet with 100% uptime, zero security incidents, 25 million transactions, 200,000 wallets and tens of millions of dollars in assets moved across the chain.
However, the shutdown comes about a year after Botanix launched its mainnet on July 1, 2025, with live applications including GMX and Dolomite and ecosystem partners such as Chainlink and Fireblocks active on the network.
As the team argued, the economics didn't work since users mostly treated Bitcoin as a passive store of value for yield.
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