GOAT Network Pre-Mining Success Paves the Way for First Decentralized Bitcoin Layer 2, with Over $8M in BTC and DOGE Committed

From day one, GOAT Network’s mission has been to transform BTC from a passive asset to an active, yield-bearing asset.

Recently, we expanded that mission to include DOGE, another popular and successful asset that people have been able to buy, but not use to generate yield.

Supply BTC or DOGE, earn sustainable BTC yield. It’s never been done before, and we planned to be the first to do it.

Last week, we turned that mission into reality. The GOAT pre-mining campaign enabled both BTC and DOGE whales as well as small holders to supply each of those assets into pools on Bitcoin Layer 1 and BNB Chain, respectively.

The BTC pool filled in a matter of hours. The DOGE pool in just days. We raised the caps on both…and both filled again, with lightning speed.

All told, Bitcoin holders big and small joined forces to supply 50 BTC, with Mining Rewards Rates starting in triple digits and sitting above 90% as of this writing. Dogecoin holders supplied 8 million DOGE, earning the same rewards rates. That’s real yield, payable in BTC – a gateway to BTCFi and MemeFi uses that were either hard, or impossible to find until now.

But Wait…How?

We’ve received tons of curious, skeptical, even dismissive responses when talking about delivering sustainable BTC yield. How can that be possible, given that Bitcoin is a finite resource, with only 21 million ever to be put into existence, the only known way to consistently generate more being the labor- and cost-intensive act of mining it?

The answer lies in a one-of-a-kind economic model that’s fueled by a one-of-a-kind idea: decentralizing the sequencer of a Layer 2 network.

To date, every Bitcoin L2 (and all Ethereum L2s, except for one) rely on a single entity to run its sequencer. A Layer 2 network’s sequencer is responsible for block production, batching transactions to improve the speed and lower the cost of transactions when compared to the Layer 1 main chain, and other essential activities. It also reaps all the revenue associated with those activities. One party (the foundation that runs the blockchain) thus gets to exert total operational control over the network, while pocketing all the resulting revenue for itself.

GOAT Network will launch its alpha mainnet in Q1 2025 as the first Bitcoin L2 with multiple sequencer nodes. In the months to follow, it will expand that model to invite dozens of external parties – top-tier blockchain infrastructure companies, large DeFi communities, and more – to run GOAT Network sequencer nodes, thus sharing both operational control and revenue with the larger community.

That decentralized sequencer, revenue-sharing model then opens the door to our novel sustainable BTC yield approach. Read the GOAT Network economic paper for an in-depth breakdown of how it all works. In simpler and shorter terms:

The GOAT Network decentralized sequencer runs on a proof-of-stake model, where node operators must stake BTC (or DOGE!) to run a node.

All of that BTC and DOGE deposited into nodes is then bridged into GOAT’s L2 network for liquidity.

Meanwhile, the gas token for GOAT Network is wrapped-BTC; every time anyone transacts on the network, it costs about a penny in BTC.

The BTC revenue from those transactions goes toward the node operators.

That BTC revenue is then converted into a yield-bearing token, yBTC.

That yield-bearing yBTC token is then split into multiple new tokens, accelerating the yield model similar to the way that cutting-edge DeFi protocol Pendle operates.

The more transactions that happen on GOAT Network, the higher the yield for everyone.

Best of all: Large protocols running sequencer nodes can earn sustainable BTC yield…but so too can anyone with even a small amount of BTC or DOGE. Supply BTC or DOGE into a GOAT Network sequencer node, and earn BTC. It’s that simple.

What’s Next?

GOAT Network’s pre-mining demonstrated the concept of sustainable BTC yield in real time. But the campaign involved supplying assets on different chains.

GOAT Network will launch its alpha mainnet in early Q1 2025. Once the chain goes live, users won’t have to migrate to other chains to earn BTC – they’ll be able to do so by interacting directly with the GOAT Network Bitcoin Layer 2 network.

Meanwhile, we’ve built a long-term user rewards system that will incentivize BTC and DOGE holders big and small to join our community, earn long-term BTC yield, and grow the pie for everyone. With the old airdrop model dying, we’re launching a plan to combine stacking Sats with joining a cohesive and cooperative community, giving our users a sense of belonging and self-empowerment, as well as an opportunity to earn rewards.

We’re just days away from all of this coming to fruition. Buckle up.

Kevin Liu is co-founder of GOAT Network. He’s a serial founder who previously helped grow the Ethereum Layer 2 network Metis to $3 billion Total Value Locked during the height of the last bull market. Follow him on X at X.com/kevinliub