On the day of my eighteenth birthday, I stood at the intersection clutching the first sum of money I had saved from my part-time delivery job, while my phone simultaneously received two notifications: a reward for 20 orders from the platform, and a red bar reminder in the crypto community about the 'Bitlayer mainnet launch.' At that time, no one could have imagined that these two fragments of life would twist into a rope that changed my college life.
After finishing my last order of milk tea on a rainy day, I squatted in the bike shed eating a cold bun and opened Bitlayer's white paper. I thought it would be filled with esoteric terms, but I was struck by the phrase 'adding smart contracts to Bitcoin'—just like a senior from the computer science department complained a few days ago: 'Bitcoin is like a sturdy iron box that can only store money, transferring funds is more cumbersome than delivering takeout.' It turns out this technology aims to install a flexible smart lock on that iron box.
After trying to invest a bit of my delivery earnings into it, I was truly amazed. The transfer speed was ten times faster than the public chains I had used before, and the transaction fees were so low that they were almost invisible. Once, I was late delivering an order and was penalized, and while I sighed at my phone, the deposit notification from Bitlayer popped up, with the on-chain confirmation time being faster than the customer’s apology message.
There are always people around me saying that cryptocurrencies are a bubble, but Bitlayer has shown me real value. It doesn’t rely on hype like some tokens but installs 'flexible steering' on Bitcoin's 'sturdy chassis'—just like me riding an electric bike through the city, needing a stable base as well as a quick response. I still make deliveries, but the Bitlayer balance in my wallet is steadily growing, along with my delivery mileage, forming a visible confidence.
For me, a newly adult rider, it taught me not just about 'Layer 2 scaling,' but also a kind of belief: the value of doing things earnestly, whether it’s writing code on the blockchain or delivering a warm meal in the rain.