5 Bitcoin Products Solving Problems Satoshi Never Envisaged

When the mysterious genius Satoshi Nakamoto authored the Bitcoin whitepaper, he kept things to the point: the document ran to only nine pages inclusive of references, calculations, and diagrams. Satoshi couldn’t possibly have envisioned all of the possible use-cases for the Bitcoin blockchain or its eponymous native currency.

Over the years, though, products have hit the market that built on the great man’s vision and ingenuity; that respect the core appeal of the Proof-of-Work (PoW) blockchain while also extending its utility. The pioneers who developed these products and services mightn’t command the same level of respect and adulation as Satoshi, but they have helped to bring his creation to the consciousness of millions.

Here are five of the best examples.

GoBTC Pay

GoBTC Pay is a Bitcoin-native payment protocol geared towards merchants who want to accept BTC, as well as users who would like to use their digital gold as a medium of exchange. While Satoshi designed Bitcoin as a “peer-to-peer electronic cash system,” GoBTC Pay represents the infrastructure needed to handle this at scale. 

Non-custodial by design, and with an on-chain proof of every single payment, the protocol is unique in that it lets users spend BTC on the blockchain’s base layer without incurring fees; when they pay at a GoBTC merchant, the transaction is broadcast to GoMining’s dedicated mining pool which prioritises it for inclusion in the next block. Consequently, there is no need to convert to fiat at the point-of-sale or use a wrapped form of BTC.

As for merchants, they incur a modest 0.2% professing fee, which is a lot less than the 1.5-3.5% average for Visa and Mastercard. By challenging these legacy Web2 payment processors, and leveraging the Bitcoin blockchain to do it, GoBTC is advancing Satoshi’s tech in an innovative fashion.

Mezo

While GoBTC Pay empowers users to spend their BTC, Mezo takes a different approach, letting them have their cake and eat it too. A non-custodial finance app aimed at passionate bitcoiners, it lets users obtain a line of credit using their BTC as collateral and even has its own dollar-pegged stablecoin, MUSD, which is entirely backed by BTC reserves.

Mezo’s vaults also offer structured yield strategies for long-term BTC holders, the sort who would rather ‘put their portfolio to work’ by generating passive income rather than waiting to eventually liquidate their holdings at a profit. Unlike many general BTCFi projects, Mezo uses BTC as the gas asset and is fully geared towards long-term HODLers.

Lolli

Lolli is another venture designed to help users get an advantage from holding their BTC, specifically by granting them rewards at tens of thousands of stores. Available as a Chrome extension for those buying online, and as a mobile app for use at brick-and-mortar outlets, Lolli users can earn up to 30% back in BTC (or cash). It’s worth mentioning that their product is free to use for retail spenders.

Interestingly, the concept of Lolli is an echo of the early Bitcoin faucets, mechanisms that dispensed free BTC to people completing simple tasks, such as solving captchas. Now, you can effectively earn free Bitcoin through Lolli by spending at your favourite retailers, including Nike, eBay, Microsoft, and StubHub.  

Zap.stream

Streaming is big business nowadays, valued at over $674 billion, and so it was a matter of time before a project like Zap.stream came along. A decentralized live streaming platform powered by the Bitcoin Lightning and Nostr networks, it lets content creators broadcast directly to fans while earning ‘tips’ in the form of satoshis (or ‘zaps’). 

The cool thing is, with no centralized entity taking their cut, creators get to retain 100% of micropayment ‘zaps’ pledged by their appreciative viewers. To receive and send sats, all you need is a compatible Bitcoin Lightning wallet and a Nostr profile. 

Rootstock

Rootstock is a dedicated Bitcoin DeFi layer, built to empower bitcoiners to participate in activities such as lending, borrowing, and staking. Featuring yield-bearing vaults and trust-minimized bridging protocols, the sidechain is home to a thriving ecosystem of decentralized applications (dApps) that benefit from both Bitcoin’s Proof-of-Work consensus and Ethereum’s smart contract functionality.

While the Rootstock network doesn’t actually use BTC itself, its transactions are fueled by rBTC, an asset backed 1:1 by BTC. Moreover, its merged mining gives Bitcoin miners an extra revenue stream for their efforts in securing the sidechain.

17 years after the publication of the Bitcoin whitepaper, the identity of the enigmatic Satoshi remains elusive. Yet just about everyone has at least a passing familiarity with the network and cryptocurrency he developed. We have the creator himself to thank for that, but credit is also due to the second wave of big-brained developers, engineers, and entrepreneurs who strengthened the Bitcoin narrative in various different ways. Here’s to the next exciting Bitcoin-native protocols yet to spill off the production line.

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