The rise of Ethereum DeFi has seen Bitcoin's anchored asset scale exceed 20,000 coins.

The crypto assets market has long been divided into two camps: Bitcoin and Ethereum. Bitcoin is often seen as the base currency and "digital gold," while Ethereum focuses more on innovation in the application layer of currency. However, the rapidly growing DeFi sector is breaking this situation, leading to the swift rise of Bitcoin-pegged assets within the Ethereum ecosystem.

Data shows that as of August 5th, the total amount of Bitcoin-backed assets on the Ethereum network has reached 20,472 coins, close to 1% of the total Bitcoin supply, accounting for 0.59% of the total ETH market cap. In July alone, this number grew by approximately 70%. Behind this explosive growth are two main drivers: first, leading lending projects opened Bitcoin-backed assets as collateral, and second, the surge in liquidity mining.

From an internal structure perspective, WBTC holds an absolute advantage with a share of 75.8%, while renBTC and sBTC rank second and third with shares of 11.2% and 4.89%, respectively. These three assets perform excellently in metrics such as address count, activity, and large transfers. In particular, renBTC saw a surge of 111% in address numbers in July, with an active address ratio reaching 42.78%. The scale of large transfers for WBTC is also quite impressive, with a peak of 20,000 BTC within 30 days.

The explosion of these anchored assets is closely related to the policy openness of DeFi projects. In May, MakerDAO allowed WBTC to be used as collateral to generate DAI through a proposal. Subsequently, the centralized lending platform NEXO also replaced a large amount of Bitcoin with WBTC and staked it in Maker. In June, Synthetix, Curve, and Ren jointly launched liquidity incentive pools, further boosting the entire Bitcoin anchored asset sector.

However, the development of this field also faces many challenges. First, there is insufficient scalability, constrained by the issuance mechanisms of various assets. Second, the operating processes are complex, with many risk points. In addition, assets are highly concentrated among a few large holders, which is not conducive to widespread distribution. There are also views that the rise of pegged assets may weaken the security of the Bitcoin network itself.

Nonetheless, some believe that the development of Bitcoin-backed assets is beneficial for both Bitcoin and Ethereum. It expands the application scope of Bitcoin while also enhancing the network activity of Ethereum. However, recent on-chain data growth of major backed assets has shown signs of fatigue, and future trends remain to be observed. After the excitement of liquidity mining subsides, whether this asset class can continue to develop steadily is worth further attention.