Bitcoin has long been a store of value, but outside its “currency” applications, Bitcoin has been largely missing out on the decentralized finance (DeFi) revolution.

Right now, most DeFi smart contract development and transactions occur on the Ethereum blockchain. But a new $165 million project hopes to change the DeFi landscape by including more Bitcoin adoption and creating a network for Bitcoin-based smart contracts.

The project, called “Bitcoin Odyssey” is led by Okcoin, Stacks Accelerator and Stacks Foundation.

According to Okoin’s website, “Bitcoin Odyssey comes as a response both to the big influx of investors DeFi has seen over 2021 and to the growth of the Stacks ecosystem and other smart contracts solutions built on top of Bitcoin.

“The narrative is shifting: 2022 is going to be the year of Bitcoin DeFi and the Bitcoin Odyssey will be at the forefront of this dynamic.”

Alex Chizhik, Bitcoin Odyssey’s co-chair told Axios, “If we’re right, we’re about to see a lot more DeFi projects being built on top of Bitcoin… I’m excited to see a renaissance of development on the Bitcoin blockchain.”

Bitcoin Odyssey hopes to support not only smart contracts, but metaverse applications, gaming, non-fungible tokens (NFTs), decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) and other applications.

While Bitcoin is already the largest cryptocurrency as measured by market capitalization, developing more DeFi solutions would be an incredibly useful breakthrough for developers, could lead to even further increases in market-cap…

And lead the Bitcoin blockchain into direct competition with Ethereum.

Read more about Bitcoin as DeFi, HERE

Source: https://news.yahoo.com/165-million-effort-bitcoin-more-172042008.html