Marathon Digital, the largest mining company, developed a Layer 2 solution for Bitcoin to enhance BTC functionality and drive innovation.
Marathon Digital Holdings, the largest cryptocurrency mining firm and blockchain ecosystem developer, announced the launch of Anduro, a Layer 2 protocol on the Bitcoin network.
The main goal of the initiative is the need to stimulate BTC adoption and the development of its ecosystem. Anduro allows developers to create side-chains on the Bitcoin network and customize them to their needs. Marathon Digital specialists are busy developing two Anduro-based side-chains at once — Coordinate and Alys.
The Coordinate side-chain will be a cost-effective stack for the Ordinals community. Alys is being developed as an Ethereum-compatible tokenization chain for institutional assets. Both solutions will utilize merge-mining — miners will be able to generate transaction revenue in L2 solutions and on the mainnet simultaneously.
According to Fred Thiel, Chairman and CEO of Marathon Digital, although the company helped create Anduro, the project will be community-driven. He also said that the L2 solution was developed with the ability to systematically integrate decentralized governance mechanisms in mind.
The release of Anduro took place on the same day as the publication of Marathon Digital Holdings’ 2023 Holding Report. Last year, the company increased BTC mining volume by 210%. In total, the company mined 12,852 BTC during the year. Its net profit amounted to a record $261.2 million.
Fred Thiel stated that last year, the company entered into an agreement to acquire two data centers that will increase the capacity of its mining rigs to more than 900 megawatts. In 2023, the hashing speed of the company’s computing rigs reached 24.7 EH/s, an increase of 253% year-over-year. In 2024, the company plans to increase hashing speed to about 35-37 EH/s, and by the end of 2025 — to reach 50 EH/s.
According to analysts’ estimates, the upcoming Bitcoin halving will make about one-fifth of BTC mining installations unprofitable. At the same time, large financial companies, including BlackRock and Tether, express interest in BTC mining.
