In the current cryptocurrency market, the continually surging BTC is undoubtedly the most eye-catching asset and also a core narrative of this bull run. With increasing global macroeconomic uncertainty, especially against the backdrop of interest rate cuts in the United States, BTC's status is becoming more prominent.

In addition, Solana has also become one of the most intriguing blockchain projects apart from BTC. Solana has gone through a rough patch, but this has not diminished Solana's potential. On the contrary, it has expanded and enhanced its technical optimization and community development. Today, Solana is experiencing Mass Adoption.

While BTC and Solana both hold significant positions in their respective fields, there is still a certain degree of gap between them.

BTC's main advantage lies in its decentralized security and its function as a store of value. However, it has slow transaction speeds, high fees, and relatively limited smart contract capabilities. On the other hand, Solana offers the advantage of high performance and low fees, suitable for a large volume of transactions and complex decentralized applications. This gap actually provides an opportunity for innovators to combine BTC's robust security and store of value function with Solana's efficient performance and smart contract capabilities to create a comprehensive platform that can overcome the shortcomings of both.

In this market gap, Zeus Network has proposed a new solution, creating a permissionless layer to integrate Solana's fast transaction capability and scalability with Bitcoin's security, trust, and liquidity.

On December 12, Zeus Network successfully verified the first BTC transaction on Solana using its infrastructure; on December 30, Zeus Network announced the successful verification of the first cross-chain liquidity for a Bitcoin transaction on Solana, marking a significant breakthrough in trustless cross-chain asset movement. With the launch of ZeusNode and Zeus Program Library (ZPL), Zeus Network has laid a solid foundation for cross-chain liquidity innovation.

Zeus Network Founder Justin Wang stated, "By 2025, it is expected that there will be billions of dollars in liquidity, achieving decentralized on-chain returns globally through Zeus Network's leading technology."

As the first trustless application in the Zeus ecosystem, the APOLLO platform has officially launched and successfully processed the first Bitcoin deposit, minting the first batch of zBTC, ushering in a new era of cross-chain Bitcoin liquidity. Through APOLLO, users can not only enjoy stable returns from Bitcoin assets in Solana's DeFi ecosystem but also ensure the security of BTC on the Bitcoin blockchain.

Just as Multicoin Capital co-founder Kyle Samani advised Solana founder Anatoly Yakovenko to launch a token quickly during Solana's early days of obscurity, stating that market cap represents your marketing, now, is the Zeus Network's Solana L1.5 narrative about to be embraced by the market?

Solana L1.5 + Bitcoin L2

In the cryptocurrency ecosystem, the emergence of Zeus Network marks a milestone achievement, enabling Solana not only to validate BTC transactions but also to position Solana as an L2 for BTC.

Historically, BTC's transaction speed and scalability have been bottlenecks in its development, and through the introduction of Zeus Network, Solana's high throughput and low fees provide an ideal environment for scaling BTC. For Solana, its ecosystem's previous struggle with slow growth due to insufficient liquidity will also be a thing of the past. The emergence of Zeus Network allows Solana to leverage BTC's significant liquidity to support more diversified applications.

The ZeusNode is the core infrastructure of Zeus' cross-chain solution, facilitating BTC transaction validation and forwarding to Solana to achieve seamless integration between BTC and Solana. The ZeusNode consists of two main parts: the Operator and the Guardian. In the BTC to Solana scenario, the Operator is responsible for collecting transaction proposals and submitting them to the Guardian for validation and signing. Once validated, the Operator transfers the transaction request from the BTC network to the Solana network, ensuring transaction security and efficiency.

The Guardian is the core validator of ZeusNode, ensuring the integrity and security of cross-chain transactions. Guardians participate in network validation by staking a certain amount of ZEUS tokens to ensure the safe and seamless flow of BTC assets into Solana. Guardians leverage MPC (Multi-Party Computation) signature technology, which is more decentralized than cross-chain multi-signature, to avoid single-point control and theft. ZeusNode has two types of Guardians: Regular Guardians and Institutional Guardians. Regular Guardians cater to small liquidity providers, allowing anyone willing to delegate ZEUS tokens to become a Guardian. Institutional Guardians target large-scale liquidity providers, assisting them in efficiently managing the process of BTC inflow into Solana. The institutional Guardians have a minimum requirement of holding 500 BTC and 5 million ZEUS tokens.

The development of ZeusNode is divided into seven stages. In the first stage, BTC will be introduced to Solana at a ratio of 1:20,000 with ZEUS to ensure network security. Of course, in this stage, BTC will be supported by the liquidity staking solution APOLLO developed by Zeus Network, and will be added to Solana as zBTC.

From the second stage to the fifth stage, ZeusNode will undergo network capacity expansion. By the end of the fifth stage, ZEUS will be fully delegated to each Guardian, and when each Guardian reaches the limit of holding 5 million ZEUS, unlimited inflow of BTC can begin, laying the foundation for Solana's seamless scalability and liquidity expansion. Additionally, before the fourth stage, ZeusNode will be open-sourced, allowing other developers to use Zeus Network's technology to bring BTC or other on-chain liquidity into Solana.

In the final two stages, ZeusNode will support all UTXO-based assets, such as LTC, DOGE, KAS, and other assets can be added to Solana. Zeus Network will redefine multi-chain asset interaction with Solana and the SVM layer.

Zeus's long-term goal is to introduce 1% of the total BTC supply to Solana, a goal that will bring tremendous growth potential to Solana. Once BTC liquidity enters Solana, Solana will be able to attract more applications and ecosystem development, drive rapid growth of its TVL, and gradually surpass ETH to become the world's largest and most liquid public chain platform.

A Single Strain, Dual Charms, and a Market Cap Potential of Billions of Dollars

Zeus Network is not the only project in the market attempting to expand BTC. Stacks is also one of the notable projects. The core of Stacks is to enhance the functionality of BTC by introducing smart contract capabilities to the BTC network. While Stacks focuses on the direction of native BTC expansion, Zeus Network places more emphasis on cross-chain liquidity and improved efficiency. Regarding BTC tokenization, Stacks has introduced sBTC, while Zeus Network provides zBTC. Although both are tokenization schemes to bring BTC into other blockchain ecosystems, their mechanisms and goals differ.

sBTC is a BTC tokenization achieved through the Stacks network, representing BTC locked in the Stacks network. Stacks ensures the security and value transfer of BTC through Proof of Transfer (PoX), where all sBTC is pegged to BTC through Stacks' mechanism and circulates on the Stacks network. The goal of sBTC is to enhance BTC's usage on the Stacks network and promote the development of dApps on Stacks.

On the other hand, zBTC is BTC created on the Solana network by the Zeus Network platform through APOLLO. Unlike sBTC, zBTC is not just a token but represents the liquidity of BTC in the Solana ecosystem, allowing widespread use in Solana's DeFi applications. Through APOLLO, zBTC can benefit from efficient, low-cost transactions on Solana and participate in various DeFi activities on Solana, such as lending and liquidity mining.

While Stacks and Zeus Network differ in technical implementation, their ultimate goal is to drive the development of the BTC ecosystem. Stacks enhances BTC's functionality in its native environment, while Zeus Network addresses the issue of BTC's inability to move on other blockchains by providing cross-chain liquidity. Both projects are advancing the maturity of the BTC ecosystem in their respective ways, offering users more choices and opportunities. It is worth noting that Muneeb Ali, co-founder of Stacks, is also one of the angel investors in Zeus Network.

In addition to Stacks, Thorchain is undoubtedly another significant project. Users can directly trade BTC with other cryptocurrencies on Thorchain without depending on centralized exchanges. During this bull market, Thorchain has experienced significant growth, with its ecosystem TVL increasing from $50 million to $4 billion. Behind this growth is the increasing demand within the BTC ecosystem, particularly the significant rise in BTC asset trading volume on Thorchain. The price of RUNE shows a highly positive correlation with platform activity and liquidity demand, growing from around $1 to a peak of $10.6. Today, Thorchain has a market capitalization of approximately $1.77 billion.

For Zeus Network and $ZEUS, Thorchain's success undoubtedly provides a valuable case study. As an emerging project, Zeus, despite facing intense market competition, has significant market potential due to its deep integration with the Solana ecosystem. Especially with the continued prosperity of the BTC ecosystem, Zeus Network's cross-chain liquidity solution will be a key driver for BTC to circulate on more blockchains.

Of course, Zeus Network and Thorchain still have significant differences. Thorchain focuses more on seamless cross-chain transactions and decentralization, especially its uniqueness as a native BTC cross-chain solution. Zeus, on the other hand, combines BTC liquidity with the Solana ecosystem, aiming to bring lower transaction fees and higher transaction efficiency to BTC holders on Solana.

The Value of Intermediary? 1+1>2

In traditional cross-chain protocols, there is often a challenge of how to connect two different blockchain ecosystems and make them complementary in terms of technology, liquidity, and use cases. The emergence of Zeus Network addresses this challenge and serves as a crucial bridge between BTC and Solana.

By providing cross-chain liquidity, Zeus Network enables BTC to not only participate in efficient transactions within the Solana ecosystem but also incorporate Solana's low-cost, high-speed characteristics into BTC's use cases. This integration achieves a synergy where the traditional strengths of BTC complement the modern efficiency of Solana, resulting in a 1+1>2 effect.

Zeus Network's innovation extends beyond just the cross-chain connection between BTC and Solana; its broader goal is to expand to more UTXO-based assets, creating a powerful cross-chain network effect. By including these UTXO-based assets in Zeus Network's cross-chain liquidity framework, Zeus Network can interconnect different blockchain networks, break down barriers between these networks, and establish a more comprehensive and efficient cross-chain ecosystem.

In the future, with more UTXO assets onboarded, Zeus Network is poised to become a core infrastructure platform driving the vibrant growth of DeFi and other decentralized applications. Leveraging its cross-chain liquidity, Zeus Network can not only provide more use cases for ecosystems like BTC and Solana but also unlock new value and potential for a wide range of crypto assets.

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