Jessy, Golden Finance
Recently, a project called Odin.fun has caused a sensation in a small range. This is a Runes protocol launch platform similar to Pump.fun. Its small-scale popularity has brought heat to the Bitcoin ecosystem that has been silent for a long time. On March 7, some community members reported that 74 bitcoins on the Odin.fun chain disappeared, or were hacked. Soon, the project co-founder responded on X that there was an error in the hard deposit synchronization code, causing some users' balances to exceed the deposit amount. Therefore, the 74 BTC deposit transaction cannot be found on the chain, and the current user's funds are safe.
Speaking of the relationship between public chains and token launch platforms, it is not difficult to think of Solana and Pump.fun, as well as Base and Viturals, etc. A hot token launch platform can bring a lot of traffic to the public chain it is in. For example, when Viturals was popular, the net capital inflow on Base exceeded Solana.
This is also one of the reasons why token launch platforms are so popular. Unlike the token launch platforms on other public chains mentioned above, token launch platforms on the Bitcoin ecosystem such as Odin.fun are not based on the Bitcoin chain. In order to improve the user's transaction experience and reduce the handling fee, they are generally based on the second-layer network of Bitcoin. The problem they face is that it is difficult for these projects to share the security of the Bitcoin main chain, and the hacker blunder of Odin.fun is a manifestation of this problem.
Another question that is more worthy of discussion is, for the ecological revival of Bitcoin itself, does a token launch platform like the second layer really have enough potential to attract enough funds and traffic?
Odin.fun's product design logic
Odin.fun was born in February 2025 by the founder of Bitcoin ordinal market Bioniq. It is essentially a launch and trading platform for the Runes protocol. According to official disclosures, within a month, the transaction volume of the Odin.fun platform exceeded 1,000 BTC, the number of platform addresses exceeded 37,000, and the market value of the leading rune ODINDOG•ID•YTTL•ODIN exceeded 35 million US dollars.
The Runes protocol itself is not new. It was born after the Bitcoin halving in 2024. Developer Casey earlier launched the Ordinals inscription protocol, and then developers derived the BRC-20 token protocol, but BRC-20 exposed problems such as low transfer efficiency and UTXO expansion. To solve these problems, Casey proposed the Runes protocol.
It is also thanks to the birth of these two protocols that Bitcoin has more ways to play with asset issuance in addition to value storage. And it is thanks to these two protocols that the Bitcoin ecosystem and related infrastructure have experienced an explosive development in 2023 and 2024.
For the crypto industry, there is an innovation that has never stopped, that is, the innovation of asset issuance methods. And odin.fun is a change in the issuance and trading methods of Runes protocol assets.
For a token launch platform, the key to its success lies in the design of the "casino" experience and whether it can give people a better "gambling" experience.
In terms of specific user experience, the first thing about Odin.fun is that in terms of asset issuance and trading, it has achieved the issuance of Runes assets in seconds and one-click trading of Runes assets issued on the platform.
According to the explanation given on its official website, it is Odin.fun that uses the second-layer solution Valhalla, which enables the final confirmation of the transaction in 2 seconds.
In addition to being fast, users can also experience account abstraction (no social login), no gas transactions, and transactions that do not require repeated signature confirmation, which are very convenient experiences.
All of this is due to Odin.fun hiding the underlying complexity of the chain. It is because Odin.fun is a second-layer product under the Bitcoin main chain, and the official calls the second-layer solution Valhalla.
It is also because it is a product built on the second layer of Bitcoin, so in the specific use of users, they need to use their own Bitcoin wallet to create an account, and then recharge the Bitcoin in their wallet into the account. The process of recharging Bitcoin is a process of transferring Bitcoin across the chain to the second layer built by the project.
The second-layer solution provides convenience to users, but the official has not announced how the detailed second-layer technology is implemented. In this hacker blunder, we can roughly glimpse some of the loopholes or immaturity of its technology.
According to its co-founder, when users deposit funds into the platform, they deposit the funds into the threshold signature setting, which is a decentralized 12/34 threshold signature setting that ensures the security of BTC. These funds are then sent to the ODIN•FUN smart contract. All user BTC is pegged to the BTC in the Odin.fun platform at a ratio of 1:1. The disappearance of the 74 bitcoins this time was due to a deposit synchronization error, which caused them to not be displayed.
How is the security of the bitcoins deposited by these users guaranteed? The official statement is that it is achieved through multi-signature. However, multi-signature is not absolutely safe. For users, they cannot manage their own assets, but hand over their assets to the Odin platform, which is essentially the logic of a centralized exchange.
Previously, X netizen @Real0xJason said that the BTC held by users on Odin.Fun is essentially ckBTC on the ICP public chain, and its ultimate security comes from the ICP public chain. There is no need for a cross-chain bridge between ICP and the Bitcoin mainnet. ICP's chain fusion encryption technology allows its smart contracts to interact directly with other networks, so it is more secure than the wrapped BTC generated by the general Bitcoin L2 through a cross-chain bridge.
As a token issuance and trading platform, the specific rules for its token trading are as follows: On this platform, the process of token emission is called Ascend, which is the process of token bonding. Tokens created on Odin will initially be traded along a bonding curve. On this curve, 80% of the token supply was sold at a price of 0.211 BTC. In Odin, sats (satoshis) are used as the token price. The starting price of a token is 0.11 sats (market value of $3,000), and Ascend is completed at 4.76 sats (market value of $100,000).
When Ascend is completed, a project enters the next stage, the AMM stage. According to the introduction on the official website, once the token is bound (i.e. Ascend), the remaining 20% of the token supply and 0.2BTC will be deposited in the AMM pool to support further transactions. After that, token transactions will follow the AMM curve k = X * Y, no longer the previous binding curve y = e^x.
For users of the platform, not only can they launch and trade tokens, they can also do LP on it. Moreover, the platform adopts a marketing model of recommendation rebates, and 25% of the platform fees belong to the recommended users.
Can Odin.fun carry the banner of Bitcoin ecological revival?
At present, the development of Bitcoin ecology is not optimistic. There is no project like the previous inscription that can trigger the participation of all people. Because of this, the inflow of funds and traffic cannot trigger a new round of enthusiasm for the Bitcoin ecology in the market.
The former Pump.fun and Viturals have brought the popularity of Solana and Base themselves because of the hot hype of Meme on them, which has led to the development of their on-chain ecology. However, odin.fun does not seem to have set off the same on-chain ecological boom. Moreover, the total market value of its leading token is only 35 million US dollars at its highest.
But odin.fun does not apply to this set of logic. Similar MemePump is not the first time to appear in the Bitcoin ecology. Previously, there was Satspump.fun on Fractal, the second layer of Bitcoin, Lnpump.fun on the Lightning Network, Stx.city on Stacks, and so on. However, none of these Meme Pumps on the second layer or side chain networks have achieved the same popularity as Pump.fun.
After all, it is difficult for a later imitator to surpass the successful predecessor, and a more important reason is that these Meme Pump platforms on the second layer or side chain actually lack the legitimacy of the Bitcoin main chain. This time, Odin.fun was able to stir up some volume because it hit the Runes, a new asset issuance method that is closely related to the Bitcoin main network. In addition, when the market is cold, there are fewer hot spots that can be hyped.
However, Odin.fun's influence is here. For the Bitcoin ecosystem, it is not something as innovative and hyped as inscriptions. It just superimposes runes and Meme pumps, two once very popular narratives, but now these two narratives are old narratives. Therefore, the project itself can only stir up a limited amount of heat, and for the Bitcoin ecosystem, such a project with a weaker narrative cannot carry the banner of Bitcoin's revival.
However, investors can participate with small amounts of money. How to choose a token with potential and can grow exponentially, first look at the community, and second look at the dealer. In essence, this is more of a gamble, just like the way Meme is played.
Davin
Hui Xin
Catherine
Jasper
Kikyo
Clement
Alex