Unlocking Bitcoin's latest soft fork: what opportunities Thunderbolt brings

Author: 527 Source: X, @Eth527

It's a hardcore article, but I've observed a huge narrative quietly brewing. Many people don't know that BTC has completed a significant soft fork of Bitcoin Thunderbolt, which means that Bitcoin introduces native programmability. Those who understand will naturally understand what this means, and those who don't understand will understand it after reading this. The big one is coming!

First, the dilemma of lack of native expansion solutions

Bitcoin is known worldwide for its unmatched security, but the limitations of scalability have prevented the value of assets on the Bitcoin chain from being fully realized. The launch of the Ordinals protocol has stimulated people's expectations for Bitcoin's expansion potential and brought new development opportunities to the Bitcoin ecosystem. In this context, multiple scaling solutions have emerged to unleash the potential of on-chain assets and promote the prosperity of the on-chain ecosystem.

However, existing scaling schemes often sacrifice Bitcoin's native nature, introducing additional trust costs and security risks. Although these programs attracted a small number of users through incentives and stimulated a certain amount of market enthusiasm in a short period of time, as the incentives declined, these participants also lost interest and gradually lost interest. For example, Babylon, which was recently hit by Waterloo, withdrew more than $2,100W worth of BTC from the protocol within 24 hours of its airdrop launch. The reason for this is that Babylon's technical solution needs to lock up BTC in exchange for sidechain assets, and the main chain Bitcoin assets cannot be used directly, which weakens the appeal to Bitcoin native users, and participants will leave as soon as the airdrop is in hand.

The same is true of Bitlayer, another very popular Bitlayer, which is advertised as "the fastest growing Bitcoin Layer 2, but after its insane incentives are over, the boom is not there, because participants are more concerned about short-term gains than long-term use in the ecosystem." Because Bitlayer's users need to convert BTC to on-chain tokens through a custodial bridge, this means a strong reliance on third-party escrow and potential risks. As soon as it becomes unprofitable, users rush to transfer their BTC.

In summary, it turns out that scaling solutions that are detached from nativeness are very attractive to Bitcoin users and are not really a solution.

2. Native Enhancements: The True Direction of Bitcoin Scaling

Home is becoming more and more aware that only by making a fuss directly at the level of the Bitcoin protocol can we truly break through the bottleneck. Among them, the ideas represented by @nubit_org are attracting attention. Nubit drove Bitcoin Thunderbolt – a soft fork of Bitcoin's base layer, which directly modifies the Bitcoin protocol to provide greater transaction speed and programmability. For example, through UTXO Bundling technology, the transaction speed is 10 times faster than that of traditional Bitcoin; For example, the OP_CAT opcode is introduced to support the development of applications directly on Bitcoin to achieve native programmability; For example, Goldinals integrates standards such as BRC-20, Runes, and Ordinals to unify asset protocols; There's also BitMM that enables trustless on-chain transactions.

This scaling is "on-mainchain", meaning that native BTC can directly participate in smart contracts and transactions without the need for cross-chain wrapping alternatives. Nubit's native scaling solution does not require traditional cross-chain bridges, and its verification is completely completed on-chain, without the risk of third-party custody.

3. Comparison of the advantages and disadvantages of the path

In order to help readers better understand the differences between native and non-scaling solutions, we have created a table for you to see at a glance:

! [Explaining Bitcoin's Latest Soft Fork: What Opportunities Will Thunderbolt Bring?] ](https://img.gateio.im/social/moments-9e496c3195af576d5ed6bc0df17fb90a)

Combining these, it can be found that the advantages brought by "native" are all-round: there is no intermediary in security, the trust cost is almost zero, the liquidity of Bitcoin is not wasted in asset utilization, and the ecological development resonates with the growth of Bitcoin. Of course, the challenge of native solutions is that they are difficult to implement, and often require consensus from the Bitcoin community (such as a soft fork upgrade) to land. This makes native pathways likely to be slower to advance and requires strong technical arguments and community mobilization capabilities.

Fourth, the importance of "nativeness" to the value capture of Bitcoin

In addition to the feasibility of scaling solutions, originality is also very important to promote the value of the Bitcoin ecosystem.

1. Safety spillover effect:

Non-native scaling schemes allow a large number of transactions and fees to occur on other chains, with only a small number of locked/unlocked transactions visible on the Bitcoin mainnet. Bitcoin itself does not benefit from these Layer 2 transactions, and in the long run, it cannot directly improve the security and value support of the mainnet. The native scaling solution allows transaction activity to occur on the Bitcoin mainnet, and each transaction brings fee income to Bitcoin miners, thereby strengthening the security budget and computing power stability of the Bitcoin network. This effect is particularly critical for Bitcoin to remain safe after future halvings with fees alone.

2. Value attribution:

Both Babylon and Bitlayer have their own native tokens, which act as payment fees or governance. A portion of the ecological value is captured by these new tokens, diluting BTC's position as the only value carrier. For example, users of Babylon pay more attention to the price and income of BABY tokens, rather than the price of BTC itself; DeFi runs on Bitlayer, and it is the contract tokens and governance coins on its chain that may be on fire, while BTC only exists as collateral. In the long run, if Bitcoin's innovation dividends are taken away by other tokens, it will not be ideal for pure BTC investors. In the native scaling solution, all applications directly use BTC as the pricing and settlement asset. Whether it's issuing tokens, NFTs, or running decentralized applications, the underlying consumption is BTC. The demand for BTC has risen as applications have boomed, and BTC holders have benefited from this ecological growth.

In general, "native" means that Bitcoin's own value can participate in and amplify, while non-nativeness means that value may spill over. For investors who believe in Bitcoin's long-term value, the native solution is undoubtedly more in their interest.

V. Final Word

By comparing the existing scaling schemes, the native wide chance path shows its unique advantages, which not only solves the bottleneck of Bitcoin scaling, but also maintains the security and trustless characteristics of Bitcoin. This huge innovation is giving birth to an explosive narrative that deserves further analysis and follow-up by all investors. As the implementer of Bitcoin Thunderbolt, Nubit represents the native scaling that has led to a major upgrade for Bitcoin, becoming the first Bitcoin project recognized by HSBC in its latest report.