Author: Jessy, Golden Finance
Recently, a project called Odin.fun has caused a stir in a small area. 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 dormant 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.
When it comes to 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. A popular 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 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 provide users with a better trading experience and reduce handling fees, 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, in the past 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. However, BRC-20 exposed problems such as low transfer efficiency and UTXO inflation. To solve these problems, Casey proposed the Runes protocol.
Thanks to the birth of these two protocols, Bitcoin has more ways to issue assets besides storing value. Thanks to these two protocols, the Bitcoin ecosystem and related infrastructure have experienced explosive growth in 2023 and 2024.
For the crypto industry, there is one kind of innovation that has never stopped, that is the innovation of asset issuance methods. Odin.fun is a change in the way Runes protocol assets are issued and traded.
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 the specific user experience of the product Odin.fun, first of all, 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 to be completed in 2 seconds.
In addition to being fast, users can also experience very convenient experiences such as account abstraction (no social login), gas-free transactions, and transactions without repeated signature confirmation.
All of this is thanks to Odin.fun hiding the underlying complexity of the chain. This is because Odin.fun is a second-layer product under the Bitcoin main chain, and the official second-layer solution is called Valhalla.
Because it is a product built on the second layer of Bitcoin, users need to create an account with their own Bitcoin wallet 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 two-layer solution provides convenience to users, but the official has not announced in detail how the two-layer technology is implemented. In this hacker incident, 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 a threshold signature setup, which is a decentralized 12/34 threshold signature setup that ensures the security of BTC. These funds are then sent to the ODIN•FUN smart contract. All user BTC is pegged to BTC in the Odin.fun platform at a 1:1 ratio. 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 explanation 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 existing 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 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 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 official website, once the token is bound (Ascend), the remaining 20% of the token supply and 0.2BTC will be deposited into 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 the users of the platform, they can not only issue and trade tokens, but also become LPs. Moreover, the platform adopts a marketing model of referral rebates, and 25% of the platform fees belong to the referral users.
Can Odin.fun take up the banner of Bitcoin ecosystem 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.
Pump.fun and Viturals both became popular due to the hype of memes on them, which led to the development of their on-chain ecosystems. However, odin.fun does not seem to have set off the same on-chain ecosystem boom. Moreover, the total market value of its leading token is only 35 million US dollars at its highest.
However, odin.fun does not fit this logic. This is not the first time that a similar MemePump has appeared in the Bitcoin ecosystem. Previously, there was Satspump.fun on the second-layer Fractal of Bitcoin, Lnpump.fun on the Lightning Network, Stx.city on Stacks, etc. However, none of these Meme Pumps on the second-layer or sidechain networks have achieved the same popularity as Pump.fun.
After all, it is difficult for a late imitator to surpass the successful predecessor, and a more important reason is that these second-layer or side-chain Meme Pump platforms actually lack the legitimacy of the Bitcoin main chain. This time, Odin.fun was able to stir up some buzz because it hit the mark of 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 only goes so far. For the Bitcoin ecosystem, it is not something as innovative and hype-filled as inscriptions. It is just a superposition of runes and meme pumps, two once very popular narratives, but now these two narratives are old narratives. Therefore, the project itself can only generate limited heat, and for the Bitcoin ecosystem, such a project with a weak 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, the dealer. In essence, this is more of a gamble, just like the way Meme is played.
