Botanix Shuts Down Bitcoin L2 Spiderchain After Four Years

Botanix Labs is winding down its Spiderchain Bitcoin Layer 2, giving users until July 9 to withdraw all assets before the network goes dark. The Polychain-backed project cited insufficient demand for Bitcoin-native DeFi as the reason it could not sustain itself economically.

In a post on X Tuesday, Botanix said the shutdown follows roughly a year of mainnet operation during which the network processed about 25 million transactions and onboarded approximately 200,000 wallets. Any assets remaining in the network after July 9 will be swept by the federation and become unrecoverable.

"It is with a heavy heart that we announce we are winding down the Botanix network," the team wrote.

No Product-Market Fit

Botanix, which raised $11.5 million of venture capital, attributed the closure to three structural forces within the Bitcoin ecosystem. Most holders still treat BTC primarily as a reserve asset and yield vehicle, the team said, limiting the frequency of onchain activity that fee-revenue models depend on.

Demand that does exist for Bitcoin-backed DeFi has concentrated around wrapped BTC products operating on Ethereum, rather than Bitcoin Layer 2 infrastructure. The third factor: growing activity on centralized venues, including Robinhood and Hyperliquid, and in institutional investment products, drew users who prioritize accessibility over decentralization.

"The honest answer we have arrived at, after living inside it every day, is that it did not work, at least not in this market and not on this timeline," the team wrote in the same post.

Spiderchain Mainnet

Botanix launched its Spiderchain mainnet in July 2025 after four years of development. The architecture paired an EVM-compatible execution environment with a dynamic federation of stakers to custodianize Bitcoin without a native token, distinguishing it from incentive-driven Bitcoin L2 competitors.

The network integrated with Chainlink, Fireblocks and Galaxy and maintained 100% uptime with no security incidents throughout its mainnet run.

The shutdown is the highest-profile closure of a Bitcoin Layer 2 to date. Competing networks including Stacks and Rootstock remain active, while Citrea, a newer entrant, has positioned itself around Bitcoin-specific use cases such as private payments rather than general EVM replication.