Rootstock, a platform bridging sensible contracts with Bitcoin, noticed a big enhance in mining exercise and community safety throughout early 2025, regardless of a slowdown in general utilization.
The platform skilled a dramatic rise in merged mining participation, reaching 81%, up from 56% in late 2024. This enhance got here after main mining swimming pools like Foundry and SpiderPool joined the community, pushing Rootstock’s hash energy previous 740 exahashes per second, exceeding the Bitcoin community’s complete hashrate from October 2024.
The surge in mining exercise was complemented by a 60% drop in transaction charges, bettering Rootstock’s competitiveness within the Bitcoin layer-2 ecosystem.
Nevertheless, Rootstock’s DeFi efficiency noticed a decline. The overall worth locked (TVL) in its DeFi sector dropped each in Bitcoin and US greenback phrases, reflecting broader market cooling. TVL had briefly peaked at $244 million in January however fell to $179.9 million by March, a 20% lower.
Rootstock additionally confronted shifting developments in its stablecoin market. USDt remained dominant however misplaced important market share, falling from 41.3% to 27.5%. Lively and new addresses noticed steep declines, with a drop of 26.5% and 54.7%, respectively, whereas day by day transactions noticed a slight enhance.
On the event facet, Rootstock continued its progress by launching the Lovell 7.0.0 improve, bettering its Ethereum compatibility. Moreover, it shaped new partnerships with LayerZero and Meson Finance and launched initiatives aimed toward fostering developer progress and governance enhancements.
Whereas the platform confronted some setbacks in its DeFi ecosystem, its safety and infrastructure upgrades place it nicely for continued progress, particularly as demand for DeFi on Bitcoin will increase.
