$SAVM received unprecedented shilling since its launchpad sale, leading to an initial pump to disregard all fadoooors. This was all due to the fact it could garner more attention by promoting itself as "something something phenomenal built on Bitcoin", appealing to a broader audience who were hungry for some fresh corn narratives. And now, $SAVM is causing much controversy due to its product's viability; the project has been claiming it is a ZK Layer 2 that uses native BTC as gas. Yet, this claim is currently unsubstantiated at least, and worst, it looks like they have nothing that resembles such technology.
While the turmoil engulfed Crypto Twitter with endless debates, within the Ordinals community, there's still little to no interest in $SAVM, except for discussions about its shadiness. It was never a point of focus to begin with. The reason? Well, you tell me. $SAVM is actually an ERC-20 token!
The consensus within the Ordinals community is to avoid any projects promising to build on Bitcoin, but goes ahead and issue tokens on Ethereum or any other chain. However, those not closely following the Ordinals community may be unaware of this fact. So we see blood on the streets (see chart above). I believe many bought into SatoshiVM’s pitch on whatever they are building, which is all caused because most people just don’t know what is going on in Bitcoin world.
First, let’s talk about $SAVM and pump and dumps. During a space held by Mario Nawfal, SatoshiVM were caught with their pants down (start listening from the 1h 02m mark).
EdanYago from Sovryn asked a simple question: “Are you building a ZK rollup? An optimistic rollup? Or a validity or sovereign rollup?”
SatoshiVM answers, “A ZK rollup.”
EdanYago cuts off SatoshiVM, calling them “a fraud and a scam” because ZK rollups are impossible on Bitcoin (though there is some nuance to this claim).
He further elaborates that various documents provided by SatoshiVM have only shown “mishmash of buzzwords and different kinds of descriptions of rollups” and “pieces grabbed from different papers which I am familiar with because I work in this stuff.”
MacnBTC, who is the advisor and the biggest shill of $SAVM tries to comeback with a bunch of mumbo jumbo but he is immediately shutdown by EdanYago, as he has the higher ground in technical terms.
But what one must ask, “then what are these guys talking about when they say it is possible to create zero knowledge proofs on Bitcoin without any forks?” Like mentioned above, the conversation is nuanced, and it is dependent on where you draw the line as to what a ZK rollup is. But when applying strict standards, it seems like EdanYago’s claim stands.
So Wat Do?
As seen above, the majority of the market is not ready for technical discussions; only the well-versed can identify and expose the imposters. Is this a bad thing? Kinda. But risk comes with opportunity. If the broader market is prone to pump and dump schemes like $SAVM, then it can also mean that actual projects with potential value in the Ordinals space are under the radar, yet.
But what projects could be valuable, and where can I look for these projects?
You don’t look for projects. You look for problems:
BRC-20s have an oracle problem. Not only that current indexer solutions are inefficient, they are centralized.
BRC-20s are very hard to trade because they are basically NFTs disguised as fungible tokens.
Currently there are solutions trying to solve these problems. For the first problem, we have $TRAC and other undisclosed projects. For problem two, there are many projects building Layer 2s on Bitcoin. All of these projects are proposing airdrops or creating point schemes to lure user into their ecosystem.
However, the problem is that most people don't have that much money to throw in to every project that happens to build on Bitcoin at the moment. Furthermore, the point mania causes massive fatigue, while it is highly competitive. Not to mention it is not ideal to lock up your BTC into shady projects claiming to achieved a "zk-EVM Layer 2", while you don't understand anything about the underlying tech.
"So what what the f*** I'm I supposed to do??"
My personal bet is to invest in native assets that live on the Bitcoin Mainnet. Whether it be Quantum Cats, Bitcoin Puppets, or Node Monkes, it is evident that builders are eager to capture these communities as they signify the core community in the Bitcoin space.
As we have seen what happened to Pudgy Penguins and many other prominent NFT collections, projects are incentivized to appeal to the strongest communities with airdrops. Therefore, buying a few bluechip NFTs on the Bitcoin Mainnet will become an asymmetrical bet to the average hodler.
But again, it is important that while you are holding these NFTs, you should make sure that the ecosystems you participate in are highly related to the two main problems mentioned above. And since there will be more and more scams and shady projects entering the space for a quick buck, it will be crucial to differentiate the real to the fakes.
From my experience, the fakes are usually the ones that pump out tokens on other blockchains while calling themselves "Bitcoin something something", which are the majority of projects trying to launch on Bitcoin.
Of course, you will miss out on some token launches by following this strategy, but if you don't want to deal with the confusion and drama to the likes of SatoshiVM, I believe this could be a winning strategy for those who want to be more passive.
Fast & cheap transactions on Bitcoin, the hardest crypto asset, are an attractive narrative.
But the complexities of building a REAL decentralized L2 that inherits the security of BTC are significant.
Many "L2s" will launch promising…
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Bitcoin Layer 2, BTCFi, BRC-20, and Halving are all related to the current meta, and the mindshare is growing. As we are approaching the halving while the macro environment is signaling lower interest rates, I believe we will see Bitcoin entering price discovery in the near future, and there, many Bitcoin-related projects will thrive, or die.
