In the current cryptocurrency market, BTC, which has repeatedly reached new highs, is undoubtedly the most attractive asset and one of the core narratives of this bull run. With the increasing uncertainty in the global macroeconomy, especially against the backdrop of interest rate cuts in the United States, the status of BTC is becoming more prominent.

In addition, Solana has also become one of the most attention-grabbing blockchain projects, besides BTC. Solana has gone through a period of downturn, but this has not diminished Solana's potential. On the contrary, it has expanded and enhanced its technical optimization and community development. Now, Solana is embracing Mass Adoption.

Although BTC and Solana both occupy important positions in their respective fields, there is still some degree of gap between them.

The main advantages of BTC are its decentralized security and function as a store of value, but it has slow transaction speed, high fees, and relatively limited smart contract functionality. On the other hand, Solana offers the advantages of high performance and low fees, making it suitable for a large number of transactions and complex decentralized applications. This gap actually provides an opportunity for innovators to combine the strong security and value storage functionality of BTC with the efficient performance and smart contract functionality of Solana, forming a comprehensive platform that can compensate for the shortcomings of both.

In this market space, Zeus Network proposes a new solution to create a permissionless layer that integrates Solana's fast transaction capability and scalability with the security, trust, and liquidity of Bitcoin.

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

Justin Wang, founder of Zeus Network, said, 'By 2025, it is expected that there will be billions of dollars in liquidity, achieving decentralized on-chain income through Zeus Network's leading global 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 the stable returns of Bitcoin assets in the Solana DeFi ecosystem, but also ensure the security of BTC on the Bitcoin blockchain.

As Multicoin Capital co-founder Kyle Samani suggested to founder Anatoly Yakovenko to launch tokens as soon as possible when Solana was ignored, the reason given was that market value would represent your market promotion. Now, will the Solana L1.5 narrative of Zeus Network be accepted by the market?

Solana L1.5 + Bitcoin L2

In the Crypto Assets ecosystem, the emergence of Zeus Network signifies a milestone progress, enabling Solana not only to verify BTC transactions but also to build Solana as BTC's L2.

For a long time, the transaction speed and scalability of BTC have been one of its development bottlenecks. Through the introduction of Zeus Network, Solana's high throughput and low transaction fees provide an ideal environment for the expansion of BTC. As for Solana, the dilemma of slow development due to insufficient liquidity in its ecosystem will also be gone with the appearance of Zeus Network. The emergence of Zeus Network enables Solana to use BTC's huge liquidity to support more diversified applications.

ZeusNode is the core infrastructure of the Zeus cross-chain solution, which completes the seamless connection between BTC and Solana by verifying and forwarding BTC transactions to Solana. ZeusNode consists of two main parts: Operator and Guardian. In the scenario of BTC to Solana, the Operator is responsible for collecting transaction proposals and submitting them to the Guardian for verification and signature. Once verified, the Operator passes the transaction request from the BTC network to the Solana network, ensuring the security and efficiency of the transaction.

Guardian is the core verifier of ZeusNode, responsible for ensuring the integrity and security of cross-chain transactions. Guardian participates in network validation by staking a certain amount of ZEUS tokens to ensure the safe and seamless flow of BTC assets into Solana. Guardian adopts the MPC (Multi-Party Computation) signature technology, which is more decentralized than cross-chain multi-signature (Multi-Signature) and can prevent single-point manipulation and theft. ZeusNode has two types of Guardians: ordinary Guardian and institutional Guardian. The ordinary Guardian is for small liquidity providers, and anyone willing to delegate ZEUS tokens can become a Guardian. The institutional Guardian is for large-scale liquidity providers, helping them efficiently manage the process of BTC flowing into Solana. The threshold for institutional Guardian is 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 the security of the network. Of course, during this stage, BTC will be supported by the liquidity staking solution APOLLO developed by Zeus Network and added to Solana as zBTC.

From the second phase to the fifth phase, ZeusNode will expand the network capacity. By the end of the fifth phase, ZEUS will be fully entrusted to each Guardian. When each Guardian reaches the limit of 5 million ZEUS, unlimited inflow of BTC can be initiated, laying the foundation for Solana's seamless scalability and liquidity expansion. At the same time, before the fourth phase, ZeusNode will be open sourced, allowing other developers to use Zeus Network's technology to bring the liquidity of BTC or other chains into Solana.

In the final two stages, ZeusNode will support all UTXO-based assets, such as LTC, DOGE, KAS, etc., to 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 BTC's total supply into Solana, the achievement of which will bring tremendous growth potential to Solana. Once the liquidity of BTC enters Solana, Solana will be able to attract more applications and ecosystem landing, drive rapid growth of its TVL, and gradually surpass ETH to become the world's largest and most liquid public chain platform.

A plant with double beauty, with the potential market value of billions of dollars

Zeus Network is not the only project on the market that attempts to expand BTC. Stacks is also one of the highly anticipated projects. The core of Stacks is to enhance the functionality of BTC by introducing smart contract functionality into the BTC network. Unlike Stacks, which focuses on native BTC extension, Zeus Network focuses more on cross-chain liquidity and efficient performance improvement. In terms of tokenization of BTC, Stacks has launched sBTC, while Zeus Network provides zBTC. Although both are tokenization solutions that bring BTC into other blockchain ecosystems, their mechanisms and goals are different.

sBTC is a BTC tokenization implemented 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), and all sBTC is pegged to BTC through Stacks' mechanism and circulates in the Stacks network. The goal of sBTC is to enhance the use of BTC on the Stacks network and promote the development of dApps on Stacks.

zBTC is created by Zeus Network on the Solana network through APOLLO, representing the liquidity of BTC in the Solana ecosystem and can be widely used in Solana's DeFi applications. Unlike sBTC, zBTC is not just a token. Through APOLLO, zBTC can enjoy efficient and low-cost transaction experience on Solana, and participate in various DeFi activities on Solana, such as borrowing, liquidity mining, etc.

Although Stacks and Zeus Network have differences in technical implementation, their ultimate goal is to promote the development of BTC ecosystem. Stacks enhances the functionality of BTC in its native environment, while Zeus Network solves the problem of BTC's inability to flow in other public chains by providing cross-chain liquidity. Both are promoting the maturity of the BTC ecosystem in their own way, providing users with more choices and opportunities. It is worth noting that Muneeb Ali, co-founder of Stacks, is also one of the angel investors of Zeus Network.

In addition to Stacks, Thorchain is undoubtedly another important project. Users can directly trade BTC and other encryption assets on Thorchain without relying on CEX. During this Bull Market, Thorchain has seen significant growth, with its ecosystem TVL increasing from $50 million to $4 billion. Behind all of this is the increasing demand for the BTC ecosystem, especially the significant increase in the trading volume of BTC assets on Thorchain. The price of RUNE shows a high positive correlation with the platform's activity and liquidity demand, growing from around $1 to a peak of $10.6. Today, Thorchain has a market value of approximately $17.7 billion.

For Zeus Network and $ZEUS, the successful experience of Thorchain undoubtedly provides a valuable case to learn from. As an emerging project, Zeus still has great market potential despite facing fierce market competition, thanks 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 become a key factor in promoting the circulation of BTC on more chains.

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. Zeus, on the other hand, combines BTC liquidity with the Solana ecosystem, focusing on bringing lower transaction fees and higher transaction efficiency to BTC holders on Solana.

The value of intermediaries? 1+1>2

In traditional cross-chain protocols, there is often a problem. How to connect two different blockchain ecosystems and make them complement each other in terms of technology, liquidity, and application scenarios. The emergence of Zeus Network solves this problem and becomes an important bridge between BTC and Solana.

By providing cross-chain liquidity, Zeus Network enables BTC to not only participate in the efficient transactions of the Solana ecosystem, but also incorporate Solana's low-cost and high-speed features into the use cases of BTC assets. This combination achieves a synergistic effect where the traditional advantages of BTC and the modern efficiency of Solana complement each other, resulting in a 1+1>2 effect.

Zeus Network's innovation is not limited to the cross-chain connection between BTC and Solana. Its deeper goal is to form a powerful cross-chain network effect by expanding to more UTXO-based assets. By incorporating these UTXO-based assets into Zeus Network's cross-chain liquidity framework, Zeus Network can connect different blockchain networks, break down barriers between these networks, and form a more complete and efficient cross-chain ecosystem.

In the future, with the integration of more UTXO assets, Zeus Network is expected to become a core infrastructure platform that promotes the flourishing development of DeFi and other decentralized applications. With its cross-chain liquidity, Zeus Network can not only bring more application scenarios to ecosystems such as BTC and Solana, but also provide new value and potential for a wide range of encryption assets.

：