The Shutdown That Exposed Botanix

Yesterday, the Botanix developers announced the shutdown of their network. For those unfamiliar, Botanix is an EVM-based Bitcoin sidechain.

This is not the first time I have read a shutdown announcement for yet another blockchain, and every time it raises the same question: how do the developers know the chain is going to stop? Do they have a kill switch and can pull the plug themselves, regardless of what other nodes on the network might want? If yes, then at least they are doing the right thing by making it official. Corporate blockchains, fully controlled by a closed circle of insiders, can be useful to those insiders when they do not fully trust each other. But why would anyone outside that circle rely on such a blockchain - including developers who might build projects on top of it - if they have zero power over the people who control it?

Let us take another look at Botanix. It had applications deployed on its EVM, including GMX and Dolomite. It had tokens issued on it, including USDC.e and WETH. So what happens to all of that now? The apps go dark, and as the Botanix team itself has written, the tokens become unrecoverable.

The Botanix shutdown is yet another reminder to future app developers: do not build on corporate blockchains if you do not want your smart contracts, your tokens, and your users' tokens to vanish one day. Other blockchains built on the same centralized foundation will have even less chance of success going forward.

If you genuinely need both Bitcoin's reliability for protecting your savings and EVM capabilities for running applications, you can keep your savings in Bitcoin and exchange them for assets on EVM networks as needed at rabbit.io.