POLL: Have the OP_CAT Wars started?
The Bitcoin community is discussing the potential of OP_CAT
Hi Bitcoin Builders,
I hope you had a great week. Here’s the latest in the Bitcoin Builder ecosystem.
Starkware proposed to scale Bitcoin with ZK-STARK following a potential OP_CAT Bitcoin upgrade.
In their announcement, they write:
Starknet will become the first network to settle simultaneously on Bitcoin and Ethereum and scale Bitcoin to many thousands of transactions per second. This will happen within six months after the potential Bitcoin upgrade, OP_CAT.
However, not everyone fully supports OP_CAT.
Afnan Rahman, the co-founder and CEO of AYCE & Co, writes, “Rushing OP_CAT on Bitcoin could come at an immense security cost.”
Bitcoin’s history and main use case as a secure protocol face an existential threat with rushed OP_CAT adoption.
In addition, Adam Back and @brian_trollz from Bitcoin Magazine got into a public discussion on the merits of OP_CAT on X.
The Blocksize Wars from 2015-2017 were a critical moment in Bitcoin’s history. Are we at the beginning of another war?
Layers
The Bitcoin and Beyond presentation series, created by The Rollup, dives into Molecule, which aims to bring the Solana Virtual Machine to Bitcoin.
Bitcoin Layers released an analysis of Lightning. In comparison to other scaling solutions, Bitcoin Layers deemed Lightning to have a low risk in its four major categories: Bridge Custody, Data Availability, Network Operators, and Settlement Assurance.
Grayscale, an early mover with institutional Bitcoin products, is increasingly interested in Bitcoin Layers. They released the report, Building Blocks: Stacks, which analyzes the Stacks protocol.
Meta Protocols and L1
DOG on Runes is a top 10 meme coin.
Other
Robinhood is going all in on Bitcoin and crypto. This week, they bought the crypto exchange Bitstamp for $200M.
Bitcoin ETFs are good business. Bitcoin ETFs make 26% of BlackRock's 2024 inflows, 56% of Fidelity’s via Cointelegraph.
Thailand approved its first spot Bitcoin ETF.
Cointelegraph lays out the inflow from the past few months. Spoiler: it’s a lot of money.
Thanks for reading!
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