Bitcoin Layer-2 Botanix to shut down, sets July 9 withdrawal deadline

Bitcoin Layer-2 Botanix said it is winding down after concluding that demand for Bitcoin-native decentralized finance was too limited to support the network’s economics, and told users to withdraw assets by July 9. The team said organic transaction demand failed to cover baseline infrastructure costs despite nearly four years of development and a year of mainnet operation. Botanix said its Spiderchain ran with 100% uptime and no security incidents, processed 25 million transactions across 200,000 wallets, and moved tens of millions of dollars in assets. It also highlighted Dynafed, a dynamic federation designed to turn Spiderchain from a static multisig set into a rotating decentralized system, as well as integrations with Chainlink, Morpho and OKX Wallet. Even so, Botanix said activity was concentrated in long-term asset storage rather than frequent transactions that could generate fees. The team said Bitcoin remains primarily viewed as a reserve asset, token launches have broadly underperformed, much Bitcoin-denominated DeFi demand has centered on wrapped bitcoin on Ethereum-based networks, and trading activity has increasingly concentrated on centralized venues such as Robinhood and Hyperliquid. After the deadline, remaining funds are slated to be swept by the network’s federation.