A Panorama of Innovative Applications in the Bitcoin Ecosystem
The Bitcoin ecosystem will achieve a qualitative leap in 2024: The total number of Ordinals inscriptions will exceed 2.5 billion, the number of Lightning Network nodes will reach 300,000, and the TVL of smart contracts on the Stacks chain will exceed $50 billion. Emerging application scenarios include: 1) The total locked value of DeFi protocols will exceed $50 billion; 2) The monthly trading volume of the NFT market will be $1.5 billion; 3) The number of users in decentralized identity systems will exceed 50 million. Institutional participation has significantly increased, with Goldman Sachs launching a special fund for the Bitcoin ecosystem, and Nasdaq listing BRC-20 index futures. Key technological breakthroughs: RGB++ supports smart contracts, BitVM achieves off-chain computation verification, and is expected to ignite the 'Bitcoin DeFi Summer' in 2025.